Though Auburn football beat out South Carolina on paper in nearly every statistical category, it wasn’t enough to put points on the board and win the road game on Saturday night. The Tigers came out strong and went up 14-0, but were unable to score any touchdowns outside of the first quarter.
Following the game, South Carolina head coach Shane Beamer explained how easy it was for his offense to roll over the Auburn defense in the second half of the game, via Auburn Undercover:
"“We talk about this being big-boy SEC football, but we literally lined up in the second half and ran the same two plays over and over and over again,” Beamer, also a first-year coach, said postgame on the ESPN broadcast."
Not a great look for Auburn football after their third straight SEC loss. A team that was once gunning for a rematch with the Georgia Bulldogs in the SEC Championship game is now 6-5 and has to play Alabama at the end of the week.
So how did first-year head coach Bryan Harsin react when he heard Beamer’s explanation? According to AL.com, he was taken by surprise:
"“He said they were running the same two plays?”"
Once it was confirmed to Coach Harsin that Beamer did, in fact, admit to running the same two plays over and over, here’s what he had to say:
"“Okay. Um yeah, I think just, they ran inside zone. They ran it hard. I know that was one of the two plays. They were able to get some yards on it. I thought we slowed that down […] So I don’t know what two plays exactly, but I know they were running inside and they were getting some yards on it and then they were running inside — I don’t know if this is considered the second play — but they were bouncing outside because their guys were doing a good job of getting outside of contain on a couple of runs.”"
Although Auburn football’s true freshman quarterback Dee Davis took to Twitter to defend the Tigers’ first-year coaching staff, they’re definitely in the hot seat after losing to the Gamecocks.