Deuce Knight got his first start of his college career and it took all of one play to get his first touchdown of his college career. It may have come on a scramble after not finding anybody open, but he immediately turned into a gazelle and bounced, no, floated down the field. We’ll take it.
He did that three more times. I don’t know if it was the opponent, but it looked effortless. He has such a long stride that it sometimes looks like he’s running somewhat slow, but nobody was able to get their hands on him either way.
This brings in a mathematical question. If your legs are moving slowly, but your stride is long, which allows you to cover more ground, are you actually fast? Or are you just a larger person taking bigger steps? I bet the slowest human in the world looks like a speed demon to an ant, right?
Have I gone too far? Maybe, but these are the important questions of life.
The Auburn defense looked atrocious for a quarter. They looked like what an Auburn defense usually looks like against a team from the FCS.
They use quick passes to nullify the pass rush and it seems like every receiver is wide open. The troubling part, though, was the Mercer running backs running through, around, and under Auburn’s defenders. That shouldn’t happen.
On the other side of that, aside from Deuce’s float sessions down the field, the Auburn running game wasn’t too hot.
It did look like Jeremiah Cobb was a little banged up, and it was apparent they wanted to get senior Justin Jones some playing time on Senior Day, but there was no real push or busting long runs from the backs. That needs to be different next week.
Look, it’s obvious that a team like Auburn playing a team like Mercer isn’t going to come with the most motivation in the world, and once it looked like Deuce was going to be able to do whatever he wanted, maybe the idea of a blowout was too prominent too early.
That said, the defense did end up locking it down with pressure and picks, and the blowout was on.
Remember, the 2017 SEC West Champion Auburn Tigers beat Mercer 24-10. Weeks later, Auburn beat #1 Georgia and #1 Alabama. That Auburn team was better than this one, and this Mercer team is much better than that one.
By those scientific calculations, Auburn is at least seven touchdowns better than Alabama… but we’ll talk about that later this week.
Hopefully Cobb and Faulk (who left the game early) aren’t too banged up, and we have a full roster ready to play the game that matters most. We will be missing Sylvester Smith for the first half due to a probably correct targeting call, but still… ban the targeting call. Play football.
It’s now Iron Bowl week. I want all three quarterbacks to play. I want all three on the field at the same time. I want chaos. But before that, Auburn had a nice little win on Saturday. With how the home schedule has gone so far, we’ll take it any way and against opponent we can get.
