ATLANTA — “Y’all want to win? Put Boobie in.”

That’s James “Boobie” Miles’ famous line to coach Gary Gaines during a 1988 game between the Permian High School Panthers and Midland Lee. You can see it on the big screen in the 2004 classic “Friday Night Lights.”

It’s relevant to what happened 26 years later and 1,100 miles east in Atlanta on Saturday, even if Derek Luke and Billy Bob Thornton weren’t the ones standing on the sideline at Mercedes-Benz Stadium.

Instead it was JaTarvious Whitlow, a redshirt freshman running back who goes by “Boobee” — note that’s spelled with an -ee, not -ie — and Gus Malzahn, Auburn’s sixth-year head coach.

Whitlow probably didn’t say the same words to his head coach that Miles once said to his. But Malzahn did put Boobee in, and No. 10 Auburn did win, 21-16, over No. 6 Washington to open the 2018 season.

“Coach just called my name, and I knew that it was a big play,” Whitlow said after the game. “I knew that we needed to score on that down, other than just getting a first down. I had to go on and just run with everything I had in me. I couldn't go down. I had to get to the end zone.”

That big play came on a third-and-7 midway through the fourth quarter. Auburn, which hadn’t scored a point since late in the second quarter and hadn’t crossed the goal line since its first drive of the game in the first, trailed Washington 16-15 with a little more than six minutes remaining and the ball on the 10-yard line.

Up until that point, Whitlow’s numbers in his collegiate debut were relatively pedestrian: six carries for 14 yards, one catch for 5, two kick returns for 44. There had been some flashes of the high school supernova who tore apart Class 2A for 2,292 passing yards, 2,147 rushing yards and 59 total touchdowns as a senior quarterback at LaFayette, but not a full picture.

Then, offensive coordinator Chip Lindsey saw Washington line up with only five men in the box. Auburn didn’t need the end zone there — a field goal would have been enough to take the lead — but surely wanted it. And rather than put the ball in the hands of junior quarterback Jarrett Stidham or leading rusher Kam Martin, Lindsey called for a straight handoff up the middle to a redshirt freshman running back.

Whitlow had a first down almost before anyone clad in purple and gold touched him. Washington safety JoJo McIntosh, all 6-foot-1 and 205 pounds of him, met Whitlow at the 2. The running back collided with the second-team All Pac-12 selection with every bit of force his 6-foot, 216-pound frame could create, bounced off him and kept his legs churning until he crossed the goal line to score the go-ahead touchdown.

“It's just that, ‘I'm going to beat you,’” Whitlow said of his thoughts in that moment with McIntosh standing in front of him. “You're not going to beat me. That's how I feel. That's how I take every opponent. I'm going to work harder than you.”

There weren’t many who thought Whitlow could do what he did Saturday at this level, on this stage. The plan on Feb. 1, 2017, was for him to sign with Tulane, and that didn’t change until a last-minute phone call from Auburn defensive coordinator Kevin Steele. When he signed with the Tigers, he did so as a wide receiver. When he made the transition to running back the following fall, he suffered an ankle injury that all but forced him into taking a redshirt.

“It really was one of my biggest downfalls. I went through a lot, going through that,” Whitlow said of the injury. “There were nights that I just cried and just was like, man, I don't know if I just want to work. It's all just patience. We've got a new coach, Marcus Davis, he's like the biggest role model I've got. He was telling me, 'You've got to be patient. Your time is going to come. That cream is going to rise to the top. So you've just got to be patient.' I was getting in my head, like, it's going to happen. It's going to come.”

It seems that time has come. Whitlow is the boom in what he and Martin are calling the “Hurricane and Earthquake” backfield tandem. The hurricane led Auburn with 80 rushing yards on 22 carries and 32 receiving yards on five catches. The earthquake rumbled for 28 yards on eight carries.

“He was a little nervous, but I told him, 'Man, just be patient. Calm down. Act like you're in LaFayette. It's just like high school football, it's just faster.' Just play with confidence,” Martin said. “I was just so happy for the guy. You know, he deserves it.”

Whitlow’s totals were lower, but his impact certainly wasn’t: When Auburn’s defense got to Washington quarterback Jake Browning for two sacks to force a turnover on downs, the offense needed only one first down to ice the game.

Martin rushed for 2 yards on the first play and Stidham scrambled for 6 on the second. On the third, needing 2 yards to end the game, Auburn snapped the ball to the former high school cornerback in the Wildcat. He faked a handoff to Anthony Schwartz and burst through a hole on the right side of the offensive line for the game-clinching first down.

"Everybody in the building knows he's getting the ball, 3rd down and 2 for the game, and he got it," Malzahn said. "I think that'll help him moving forward with his confidence."

The waiting was hard for Whitlow, who went from being the heart of LaFayette to a redshirt freshman running back on a team that featured Kerryon Johnson. So too was this past month — before he completed his climb up Auburn’s depth chart and made his collegiate debut, his grandmother, Sylvia Holloway passed away on Aug. 11.

That’s part of why Saturday meant so much to him.

Permian High didn’t end up winning that game it put Boobie in. When Auburn put its own Boobee in the game against Washington, it did.

“It was just a point where we've just got to pound. We've gotta go. We can't stop,” Whitlow said. “Everybody doubted us and said we weren't going to come out in the second half and play like we were going to play. But we got in the locker room and told each other, the second half is ours. The first half is over with. You can't live in the past. You've got to go forward. Yes, we were slow, but we came out and showed them that we want this more than you.”