[Goose]

In what world is shifting to a shotgun on third and six inches in the Sun Bowl and then pitching it to the short side a good call, especially for a "power running" team?

The literal answer to the question is "In a world where the defense reacts as they have been instructed". Usually, that is a pretty good strategy. Probably not a good idea expecting the other team to be idiots. As others have pointed out, it would have been nice if Burns had realized he was dealing with a mistake and just run left on his own. At worst, he should have called time out. It may be that they were running a simplified offense, since he was the backup,  and he had no option to audible, and maybe not enough time even if he did have an audible available.
FWIW, I also would argue that we were not really a "Power running" team this year. Our record near the goal line speaks for itself. When CMac was present, we could kind of run inside, but nearly always we ran outside the Guards and very often we ran outside the Tackles/TE. With Love, we probably ran inside even less. This year, we also were not moving good teams on the LOS reliably. So we may have thought we were a power team, but we often didn't act like it.

[Goose]

In what world is shifting to a shotgun on third and six inches in the Sun Bowl and then pitching it to the short side a good call, especially for a "power running" team?

The literal answer to the question is "In a world where the defense reacts as they have been instructed". Usually, that is a pretty good strategy. Probably not a good idea expecting the other team to be idiots. As others have pointed out, it would have been nice if Burns had realized he was dealing with a mistake and just run left on his own. At worst, he should have called time out. It may be that they were running a simplified offense, since he was the backup,  and he had no option to audible, and maybe not enough time even if he did have an audible available.
FWIW, I also would argue that we were not really a "Power running" team this year. Our record near the goal line speaks for itself. When CMac was present, we could kind of run inside, but nearly always we ran outside the Guards and very often we ran outside the Tackles/TE. With Love, we probably ran inside even less. This year, we also were not moving good teams on the LOS reliably. So we may have thought we were a power team, but we often didn't act like it.