A&M-Auburn game could be a season-changer
COLLEGE STATION — Auburn’s introduction to Texas A&M in the Southeastern Conference was a six-touchdown loss at home to the Aggies three years ago, hastening the exit of then-Tigers coach Gene Chizik.
While A&M will take that type of easy-breathing victory every time, the arrival of coach Gus Malzahn to Auburn in 2013 has made the budding SEC West rivalry a much closer call since.
“If we learned anything the last three years, the game the year before really didn’t matter,” said A&M coach Kevin Sumlin, who’s been around for each of the three SEC meetings. “It’s what happens this year.”
A&M and Auburn meet again at 6:30 p.m. Saturday at Kyle Field, in a series that’s featured wild finishes the last two seasons.
“That first year we went there (in 2013) we were still trying to figure out who we were,” Malzahn said. “That was a big win.”
On Oct. 19 of that season at Kyle Field, No. 24 Auburn pulled off a 45-41 upset of No. 7 A&M, which featured reigning Heisman Trophy winner Johnny Manziel. The programs hurtled in opposite directions to close out the regular season.
Auburn won out the rest of the regular season, won an SEC title in Malzahn’s first year with a victory over Missouri in the league championship game, and lost in the final minutes to Florida State (34-31) in the national championship game.
The Aggies won their next three games over Vanderbilt, UTEP and Mississippi State, but were blown out by LSU in Baton Rouge, La., and closed out the regular season with a loss at Missouri. Manziel, who declared for the NFL draft following his sophomore season, lamented after the 2013 regular season that the tight loss to Auburn set things in motion for a disappointing finish to his college career.
“Whether it was we had the wind knocked out of us, or it was just one we felt like we should have won and didn’t … after that, we didn’t have the same confidence or swagger as a unit that we needed,” Manziel said prior to the Aggies managing a comeback against Duke in the Chick-fil-A Bowl, his final appearance in an A&M uniform.
A&M, with Manziel off to the Cleveland Browns, exacted its revenge in 2014, in toppling No. 3 Auburn 41-38 in Jordan-Hare Stadium on Nov. 8. The Tigers fumbled twice late in the game, including on a poor exchange near the goal-line with 2:37 remaining, and A&M defensive lineman Julien Obioha emerged from a chaotic pile with the ball.
“What happens on the bottom of the pile,” Obioha happily said in the days after when asked if he had first possession of the ball, “stays on the bottom of the pile.”
Malzhan recalled this week, “That was definitely a tough loss.”
Auburn wound up losing four of its last five games, a swoon kick-started by the A&M kick to the gut. This season, both A&M (6-2, 3-2 SEC) and Auburn (4-4, 1-4) are out of the national-title hunt, although the Aggies are clinging to No. 25 in the Associated Press poll.
“Every year is mutually exclusive,” Sumlin said this week when asked if he expected another highscoring, madcap contest. “The interesting thing is the road team has won the games since we’ve been in (the SEC). We’ve got to protect home-field advantage. They haven’t been intimidated by our place, and neither have we going there.
“We’re going to get their best shot.”