By Chuck Culpepper / The Washington Post
ATLANTA — When a gathering of 70,103 features two head coaches whose contracts call for a combined $83 million, it figures a game like No. 9 Auburn’s 21-16 win over No. 6 Washington on Saturday at Mercedes-Benz Stadium would distill to gory little details. The subspecies known as the football coach got birthed with a personality where he cannot help himself, so he dwells daily and weekly and annually in details. Essentially, details are the job description.
So when you have an important social matter such as a third down and 3 from the opponent’s 3-yard line, and you call some funky option and fumble, and then the other team has a third-and-7 from the opponent’s 10-yard line, and that team calls a run straight up the middle and converts, all the moods swing. Washington’s trick play didn’t work, Auburn made the little call that did.
Details can take a return flight from Atlanta to Seattle and leave it dripping with, if not cocktails, at least melancholia.
Washington Coach Chris Petersen: “It’s frustrating when you go into a game like this knowing it’s going to come down to a bunch of details.”
Washington quarterback Jake Browning: “It comes down to attention to detail.”
Washington offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach Bush Hamdan: “Looking back on it, we tried to get too cute in that situation.”
He meant the option, one of the game’s smorgasbord of details, and one of the three times in the second half in which the Huskies (0-1) ventured to the last 10 yards of the field, three journeys that left them totaling three points. All the fancy-schmancy plays available to people in earphones in the 21st century couldn’t unlock the Auburn goal-line defense, and so Hamdan wound up saying, “In hindsight, we should have just probably gone fast and tried to punch it in.”
Auburn did punch it in, with 6:15 remaining, so it got to go home on a happy bus after this novel, first meeting between teams who practice 2,180 air miles apart. The Tigers (1-0) punched it in with a punch, when the redshirt freshman running back JaTarvious Whitlow closed a 76-yard winning drive and erased a 16-15 deficit by bulling 10 yards straight ahead to happiness against a defense designed to deal with other matters.
“They dropped eight (defenders), I believe, twice,” near the goal line in earlier situations, Auburn Coach Gus Malzahn said, “and there wasn’t a whole lot of seams there.” So a coach whose specialty is locating seams watched as his hotshot coordinator Chip Lindsay “made a super call,” Malzahn said, meaning “when he ran the zone (run).” The redshirt freshman Whitlow went straightforward, rammed successfully into Washington’s Jojo McIntosh near the goal line and plunged in for the score.
“It’s a blessing that they can trust me now, “Whitlow said. “You can put me in the big moment, and I’m going to show you that I need to be in right then. Me and (fellow running back) Kam Martin are going to go all in. We are thunder and lightning, and we heard an earthquake.”
Well, the Auburn majority of the announced 70,103 did make a big sound at that moment that might have included relief.
A feat of architecture only 371 days old probably can’t be said to be haunted, but the Auburn experience at Mercedes-Benz has come close. First off, Auburn lost the Southeastern Conference title game to Georgia here last December. Then it lost the Peach Bowl to Central Florida here last Jan. 1. On top of that, the most searing memory of the young edifice so far involves Tua Tagovailoa’s overtime 41-yard pass a week after that, a throw of such force that if you squint, you still can spot the contrails.
That won another national title for Alabama which, come to think of it, might have been the meanest toward Auburn of all.
This time, though, linebacker Darrell Williams said Auburn “just had a different vibe from the day we stood on the field, down on the field yesterday,” while quarterback Jarrett Stidham said, “It just felt different this time,” and running back Martin said, “When we pulled up to this stadium, everybody flipped a switch.”
Together, their compellingly united team did swim through the details of a murky game in which Auburn gained 420 yards and Washington gained 398 and both fared pretty well even as drives stalled and a kicker competition commenced. Auburn’s Anders Carlson, the younger brother of former Auburn kicker Daniel Carlson in the Carlson kicking dynasty, hit three of five. Washington kicker Peyton Henry, a redshirt freshman just getting going, hit two of three.
Auburn got a first-possession, third-down, flat-out brilliant touchdown catch from the big-haired Sal Cannella, snaring and then falling on his back smack between the “8” and the “0” on his jersey. Washington, trailing 9-0 and 12-3 and 15-6, got two brilliant catches near halftime, one with just a right hand (by Ty Jones, against pass interference), and then one with just a left hand (by Quinten Pounds), the latter in the end zone, to spend halftime trailing only 15-13.
Eventually, Washington squeezed ahead with 14:06 to go, finally wringing three points from its third serious nibble at the goal line. Auburn finally countered. Washington drove to the Auburn 37-yard line and then bollixed matters with a second-down run that got pummeled. Little things mattered, from Browning’s early interception that Petersen said should have been hurled far away from all known football players, to a third-and-9 right off the bat on the winning drive in which Stidham located fullback Chandler Cox, lonely on the right, for a 12-yard gain to energize things.
From that, they go on, with each possibly benefiting from this nouveau matchup, for playoff considerations and otherwise. “I really don’t know,” Petersen said, “and I really don’t care. I just really don’t.” That’s because he gazes toward a long season for which he must prove true to his nature and obsess over the details.
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