Film Room: How Auburn (literally) ran through Baylor
The Tigers didn't need to air it out to grab a Week 1 road win they needed. They just schemed and slammed their way to victory.
AUBURN — Baylor head coach Dave Aranda said something last week that took some Auburn fans by surprise.
In a press conference several days before Auburn faced Baylor on a Friday night season opener in the sweltering Texas heat, Aranda was asked about the Tigers’ rushing attack.
“That's the best thing they do,” Aranda replied. “They're physical, and they move people. … Their run game is a downhill run game. They run power without pullers, they run counter. They have their beaters: If they see an odd front, there's things they like. They are a physical run game, and they've got talent at running back.”
Judging by reactions on social media and message boards, there was a sense of disbelief that Aranda would say that about Auburn’s offense.
The preseason hype, of course, had been on a loaded wide receiver room and the arrival of quarterback Jackson Arnold. Auburn head coach Hugh Freeze has been more known for his air attacks than his ground games. And, on top of that, Auburn was facing an unknown future at running back after the departure of Jarquez Hunter.
It turns out, the former national championship-winning defensive coordinator knew what he was talking about.
But knowing it and stopping are two totally different things.
Auburn beat Baylor by two touchdowns in the season opener while barely taking it to the skies. Arnold only threw the ball 17 times for 107 yards in his debut with the program. Highly touted Georgia Tech transfer wide receiver Eric Singleton Jr. led the Tigers with three catches. Sophomore star Cam Coleman only had one reception.
Still, Auburn led for the final 45:34 on Friday night. After going down by 11 points early in the second quarter, Baylor never got within a full touchdown the rest of the way. The Bears’ offense only got a couple of chances to tie the game and didn’t do much.
Meanwhile, the Auburn offense came up with a big answer several times — and it was simply “run through the Baylor defense.”
The Tigers racked up 307 rushing yards in the victory, with Arnold becoming the first Auburn quarterback since Nick Marshall in 2013 to run for 130-plus yards and two touchdowns in a single game. Damari Alston and Jeremiah Cobb, who spent the last two seasons as backups behind Hunter, combined for 158 yards and two scores.
Auburn averaged more than six yards per carry. Only 40 of Arnold’s 137 yards came on scrambles, so most of his damage was on designed runs. Alston’s longest run was 11 yards, and Cobb’s longest run was nine yards. It wasn’t a boom-or-bust attack.
Instead, it was a constant flurry of punches at a Baylor defense that never truly countered. Freeze and Arnold talked after the game about the importance of what taking what the opponent gives you.
And it didn’t take long to realize that the Bears had rolled out the welcome mat for the Tigers to run right through the door in Waco.
In the first Film Room of the 2025 Auburn football season at The Observer, let’s take a closer look at how the Tigers were able to dominate the Bears on the ground.
Using a wide variety of personnel and play calls — along with a clear talent and execution advantage in the trenches — Auburn ran wild in a season opener that could turn out to be a strong tone-setter for things to come.
Baylor basically invited Auburn to keep running the ball
Auburn had 43 true rushing attempts against Baylor. The remaining nine official “carries” were eight scrambles by Arnold and a lone sack.
That means 62% of Auburn’s plays were runs against Baylor. Granted, more than half of them looked like they had some sort of run-pass option (RPO) attached to them. Oftentimes, you can the Tigers’ receivers actually run routes on these handoffs instead of just straightforward run-blocking. Arnold will even fake a throw off of them to try and keep the defense honest.
But Auburn went with a run-heavy strategy because, simply put, Baylor stuck to a defense that called for it.