Florida football: The Gators defense vs. Auburn’s offense

On Saturday, one of the best defensive units in the country — Florida football — will have its biggest challenge to date.

On one hand, you have Florida football and one of the best defenses in the country.

On the other, there’s Auburn which touts freshman quarterback Bo Nix and a 38 point-per-game scoring average this season and has a league-high 1,255 rushing yards.

The big question becomes: who wins out? Offense or defense?

Well, since you asked (actually, you didn’t, I did but whatever), let’s look at the Florida football defense and Auburn’s offense.

Pounding the football

Despite having a lot of media surrounding freshman quarterback Bo Nix, the Tigers have more production coming from their backfield.

So far this season, Auburn has 1,255 yards on the ground — 200 more than the next-best team in the conference, Mississippi State — and are averaging 251 yards per game.

A lot of that comes down to the performance of JaTarvious Whitlow.

Whitlow has 463 yards this season on 69 rushes. He averages 5.03 yards per carry and has seven rushing touchdowns. He ranks third in yardage in the Southeastern Conference behind Mississippi State’s Kylin Hill and Arkansas’ Rakeem Boyd.

While a lot of talk is about his arm, Nix is the 20th-leading rusher in the conference with 173 yards on 35 carries — that is just 24 yards shy of Florida football’s Lamical Perine’s performance this season.

It’s the rushing game that Auburn excels at the most.

While Nix is a credible threat to throw the football, the Tigers are 11th in the conference in passing with just 1,017 yards in five games — that’s an average of 203 yards per game.

What’s more, is they only have a 58 percent completion.

What is means is that Auburn can be balanced, but they prefer to run the football with Whitlow or even Nix as opposed to passing.

Let’s not forget about their offensive line.

The Tigers have all seniors upfront. They average a little more than 300 pounds and do a pretty good job opening things up for Nix and the running game.

Protecting Nix’s weak side is Prince Tega Wanogho and Marquel Harrell. On the right is Mike Horton and Jack Driscoll with Kaleb Kim in the center.

All-in-all it is a pretty strong offensive line.

But, what does it mean for Florida football?

That’s a good question.

But, considering that redshirt senior end Jabari Zuniga and cornerback C.J. Henderson are probable to return to the lineup Saturday, it’s good news for the Gators.

Toss in the fact that David Reese could be joined by fellow linebacker Ventrell Miller and there is a good chance Florida football will be ready for what Auburn throws at them.

I would expect to see a lot of early run from the Tigers to see if they can get a ground game established.

The interesting matchup will be on the left with Zuniga and Kyree Campbell putting weak-side pressure on Nix and the Auburn offensive line. Of course, the right pressure would help Jon Greenard, Adam Shuler and Jeremiah Moon to capitalize on any potential mistake that pressure could lead Auburn into making.

With regard to the passing game, even if Henderson does sit out another game, Marco Wilson, Kaiir Elam, Jaydon Hill and Chester Kimbrough have proven to be able to pick up the slack on the corners while Shawn Davis and Donovan Stiner are itching for more interceptions.

The bottom line is Florida football has seen big offensive lines — look at Miami and Kentucky — and they were able to apply pressure and force sacks in both games.

The biggest thing is the Gators are going to have to wrap up at the point of attack and not let runners like Nix or Whitlow break free into the open field. That is where the Tigers can do some damage.

In the end, the Florida football defense is one that Auburn has not faced and that could be a big advantage for the Gators on Saturday.

No. 10 Florida will host No. 7 Auburn at 3:30 p.m. Saturday at Ben Hill Griffin Stadium in Gainesville.