If you’re a Clemson fan and watched Saturday night’s 19-13 win over Auburn and didn’t come away extremely thankful that Deshaun Watson is your team’s quarterback, something is wrong with you.
Hell, if you’re a fan of any team that has a clear No. 1 quarterback (who is remotely successful) and you watched Auburn in Week 1, you should be pretty thankful too. Auburn put on quite a display of how quantity isn’t always quality when it comes to the quarterback position.
Auburn coach Gus Malzahn played Sean White, John Franklin III and Jeremy Johnson all at quarterback vs. the ACC’s Tigers and it sure seemed that he couldn’t figure out which one he liked best. The game of musical chairs continued all the way to the end of the game even as Auburn finally got whiffs of the end zone in the fourth quarter.
One of those whiffs should never have happened as Auburn inexplicably got a last chance to go for the win thanks to some ridiculously poor clock management on Clemson’s part.
Instead of kicking a field goal to potentially go up nine with 40 seconds left at the Auburn 17, Clemson and coach Dabo Swinney decided to go for it on 4th and 4. Running back Wayne Gallman – who, also inexplicably, ran out of bounds the play before – was stopped short, giving Auburn a chance to drive down the field with no timeouts left.
White helped get Auburn into Hail Mary range, but his two attempts at the end zone fell incomplete. Sure, the chances of Auburn scoring a winning TD starting from its own 15-yard line with 40 seconds and no timeouts was pretty small. But we’ve all seen the crazy stuff that’s happened at Jordan-Hare Stadium in Malzahn’s Auburn tenure.
It wasn’t pretty, but Clemson got a win vs. Auburn (Getty Images). Auburn had a chance to pull within 19-13 with approximately six minutes to go, but White was intercepted by Clemson linebacker Ben Boulware at the goal line on fourth down. White played that entire set of downs for the Tigers; an occurrence that doesn’t seem all that special until you look at the usage patterns (or lack thereof) that Malzahn established on Saturday.
Franklin played three downs before White took over for five straight plays. Before Franklin’s three downs, White came in for a play after Franklin got a play after White found freshman wide receiver Kyle Davis for a 43-yard gain. Got all that? Remember, this sequence happened on the same fourth quarter drive.
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White was 10-for-21 passing for 140 yards while Johnson was 4-for-6 for 38 yards and Franklin completed one pass for -3 yards. Auburn finally got within a score in the second half (and covered the spread) when RB Kerryon Johnson scored with less than 3:30 left.
While Auburn struggled to find a quarterback before giving White the biggest share in the second half, Watson didn’t have a sparkling game himself. The 2015 Heisman finalist was 19-34 passing for 248 yards, one touchdown and an interception.
The Auburn defense deserves a ton of credit for that statline. The team’s defensive front limited Watson on the ground (21 yards) and prevented RB Wayne Gallman from creeping much over 4 yards a carry. Without the ridiculous defensive effort Auburn had no business being competitive late in the second half like it was.
But while Auburn limited the Clemson running game, it couldn’t contain Clemson WR Mike Williams.

Williams had 174 receiving yards in his first game back from a serious neck injury that nearly threatened his career. Williams smashed into the uprights when he caught a touchdown vs. Wofford in Week 1 in 2015. He had nine catches Saturday, including a clutch third-down catch vs. tight man coverage late in the fourth quarter that should have helped Clemson run out the clock.
When you open the season on the road, especially against a Power 5 team, survival is simply the goal. Clemson did just that. There was certainly more ugly than pretty at Jordan-Hare Stadium on Saturday night, but the defending ACC champions are 1-0. That’s more than a couple other preseason favorites (LSU and Oklahoma) could say after Week 1.
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Nick Bromberg is the assistant editor of Dr. Saturday on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter!
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