Clint Moseley knows most teams are daring him to beat them.

He doesn’t take much offense to that.

Heading into his third career start, Moseley also knows that if opposing defenses fail to devote a majority of their resources to stopping running back Mike Dyer, they’ll be in for a long game.

“I’m not 100 percent sure — but I’m probably 95 percent sure — everybody’s gameplan is to stop (Dyer),” Moseley said. “It’s really going to be hard for them to stop Mike. Even if they know he’s coming.”

Dyer, the case can be made, is more important to this year’s Auburn offense than any other back or receiver has been to his year’s attack in the past decade.

The sophomore running back has made up 57.5 percent of the Tigers’ rush yards this year and 31.2 percent of Auburn’s total offense. The closest back to Dyer from the past 10 years was Kenny Irons, who made up 29.6 percent of Auburn’s 2005 offense.

And he’s been finding most of his real estate through a labyrinth of eight or nine defenders in the box, as opponents bring the secondary down to stop the run.

Add in Onterio McCalebb, and the Tigers’ two feature backs have accounted for 52.9 percent of Auburn’s offense this year.

So, when Auburn runs 50 times a game, it’s not forsaking the pass.

It’s just playing to its strengths.

“We’re a run-first offense,” offensive line coach Jeff Grimes said. “You can say you want to be good at everything, and you certainly do. You have to be. But if you want to be great at anything, then I think you’ve got to emphasize that.

“There’s a priority, if you look at the number of times we hand off. It doesn’t make sense to spend an equal amount of time on both.”

Auburn ran 50 times against the Rebels on Saturday, versus only 15 passes.

Moseley was extremely efficient in those passes — totaling more touchdowns (four) than incompletions (three) — partly because of the Tigers’ healthy run game.

“That really opens it up for me,” Moseley said. “The corners are a little softer, and it really helps us out.”

The Ole Miss game was just the continuation of a trend: Auburn has run the ball 70.1 percent of the time over the past five weeks, deriving 61.0 percent of its yards from the ground.

Contrast that with 57.6 percent of its plays and 46.0 percent of its yards from the first four weeks.

Offensive coordinator Gus Malzahn has often professed the desire to be a 50-50 offense.

But sometimes you’ve got to go with what’s working.

“We’re a run/play-action team,” Malzahn said. “If we’re able to run the football effectively, that’s what we’re going to do. We’ve got to be able to do both.

“If you can’t run the football, you’ve got to throw, and if you can’t throw, you’ve got to run.”

The run game was more than enough in the second half against Ole Miss.

The Tigers ran 27 times for 178 yards after the break against the Rebels, against only five passes for 40 yards.

Auburn’s ground game only got stronger as the game went on, rushing for 3.3 yards a carry before the half and 6.6 after.

Dyer gained 116 of his season-high 177 yards after the break.

Go with what you know.

“When you have the type of run game we do, that’s very much a north-south game, I think it has the effect of wearing on people,” Grimes said. “It has the potential to wear on teams and pick up in the second half.

“That was good for us to kind of get back to that.”