What Vick Ballard has done in little more than a year at Mississippi State should be considered by most as pretty tough.

In his 13 career games with the Bulldogs, Ballard has five games with three rushing touchdowns, 1,134 rushing yards and 23 total touchdowns, including 22 on the ground.

That’s PlayStation tough.

But to Ballard, he doesn’t consider what he’s done to be that hard. It’s almost been simple for him.

“I got the easy job. They just give me the ball and I just run through the holes that they make,” Ballard said. “The offensive line has the hard job.”

Ballard couldn’t have made it look any easier last Thursday in Mississippi’s State’s 59-14 win at Memphis. Ballard rushed for a career-high 166 yards on just 10 carries and had three rushing touchdowns.

It might look just easy this week when Ballard faces an Auburn defense that allowed Utah State to run 227 yards on it last Saturday.

When Ballard looks at Auburn’s defensive youth and struggles, he doesn’t exactly salivate. Like he said before, he concentrates on carrying the ball, finding holes and busting through them. Pretty simple.

However, he does like his odds of having another run day on the field.

“I know if somebody can do it, we can do it,“ he said. “That’s what we base our offense off of is the run. We had like 200 [rushing] yards a game last year, so I can have a big game.”

In the conference opener, Auburn’s youthful defense will certainly be put on the spot. When Auburn coach Gene Chizik looks at the Bulldogs’ offense, he sees a more confidence, efficiency and physicality across the board.

“That offense is clicking,” Chizik said. “It’s hitting on all cylinders. There’s a lot of confidence, they’re physical, they have a great complementary pass game to their run game. Scoring more than 50 points in their last two games is not by accident.”

Yes, with Ballard, quarterback Chris Relf and a host of speedy receivers, starting with Chad Bumphis, the Bulldogs have good skill and athleticism on offense, but what makes this team even more deadly when it has the ball is its hurry-up offense.

Coach Dan Mullen said he used the up-tempo format to wear out Memphis’ defense and it worked. The Bulldogs look to use as little time as possible as well with Relf’s ability to run the no-huddle without looking to the sideline to make checks or get help. To Mullen, that aspect isn’t really needed with Relf’s ability to run the offense.

“If we feel we have a good play or he sees something on defense, we don’t need to look to the sideline,“ Mullen said. “We just go and run it as fast as we can.”

Mullen is looking use the up-tempo approach to tire out this set of Tigers as well, which could spell danger for the young Auburn defense. With only three returning starters back, the Tigers will have their paws full with an offense that racked up a league-high 645 yards of offense and eight touchdowns last week.

Auburn runs a similar no-huddle, which should help prepare the defense, but Chizik said the key to stopping Mississippi State is being as physical on defense as the Bulldogs are on offense.

“If we can’t match that, it’s going to be a long night defensively,” Chizik said.

But it goes beyond being physical with this team.

Auburn’s defenders can’t get sucked into a play-action game that Mississippi State runs so well because of its strong running game. They have to remember that even if Ballard isn’t running it, Relf could be. And they have to keep their eyes open because the Bulldogs’ offense has the potential to strike whenever and wherever.

“It’s hard to scheme against because you don’t know what you’re going to get,” Ballard said.