After rushing for 278 yards in a 24-10 win over Kentucky, running back Jarquez Hunter seemed to be the player to watch for Auburn against Vanderbilt.

Much like the rest of Auburn‘s offense, though, he didn‘t make much of an impact, carrying the ball 12 times for 50 yards as Auburn lost 17-7. Hunter had just two carries in the second half, a decision that Hugh Freeze said was due to the circumstances of the game.

Freeze explained the decision not to use Hunter more as not being able to due to Auburn chasing the game during the second half. Of Auburn’s six second-half possessions, the game was tied for two of them, Auburn trailed by three for one and trailed by 10 for the final two.

Auburn trailed for the entire fourth quarter, and while Hunter didn’t have a carry, he did catch three passes for 21 yards.

On the three second-half possessions where the game was either tied or Auburn was trailing by three, the Tigers ran the ball nine times compared to six passes, but only two of those runs were by Hunter.

When asked if an injury limited Hunter in the second half, Freeze said, “I don’t think he’s banged up, but he did look gassed to me.”

Even more puzzling, Hunter’s runs in the second half were of eight and five yards, not exactly signs that he was slowing down or being shut down by the Vanderbilt defense.

Payton Thorne gave a similar answer to Freeze when asked if a potential injury was limiting Hunter, saying he wasn’t sure and that he “didn’t talk to him about that.”

Hunter and the running game overall never found much of a rhythm against Vanderbilt. Averaging just three yards per carry, Auburn couldn‘t generate the explosive runs it did against Kentucky and couldn’t run the ball well enough to consistently get ahead of schedule on drives.

“We could strain a little bit more to get gaps more open, to make it easier for our running back to see like holes, but I really haven’t watched film yet, so I can’t comment on that,” offensive tackle Dillon Wade said when asked what went wrong in the run game.

Freeze gave most of the credit to Vanderbilt’s defense when asked after the game about why Auburn struggled to run the ball.

“I thought Vandy did a good job, played a lot of bear front and did a lot of different things that were going to take away some of the run game from us and thought they tackled extremely well,” Freeze said. “They’ve been very good against the run all year and were today for sure. Whether or not that was a combination of us poorly executing or whether that was them, I have to watch the film and see.”

For better or for worse, Auburn didn‘t lean on its best player against Vanderbilt. It‘s hard to quantify how much that affected the game or what Hunter could have done with more carries, but that won’t stop the questions from being asked.

Peter Rauterkus covers Auburn sports for AL.com. You can follow him on X at @peter_rauterkus or email him at [email protected]m