Unique season requires Auburn football to rebound quickly
TUSCALOOSA — Bo Nix understands the Iron Bowl rivalry as well as anyone in Auburn‘s locker room. He grew up a part of it, his dad being a former Tigers player and all.
The sophomore quarterback described it as a game that carries over. “There are a lot of kids going to school on Monday who are going to have to put up with a lot of crap whichever way it goes,” he said last week. Gus Malzahn, who has coached in 11 now, said he thinks about it “365 days a year.”
That’s why Saturday’s 4213 loss to No. 1 Alabama at Bryant-Denny Stadium might be tougher to overcome than usual – Auburn doesn’t have time to dwell on it.
The Iron Bowl is normally the Tigers’ final game of the regular season. If they’re fortunate, like they were in 2013 and 2017, they get to play in the SEC Championship game the following Saturday. But more often than not, they have time to celebrate a victory or fully digest a loss before a bowl game.
In this pandemic-altered year, they have neither. No. 22 Auburn (5-3) has two regular-season games remaining, the first being Saturday against No. 5 Texas A&M.
“That’s what we talked about in the locker room. I mean, you gotta be big boys. You got to take it like a man. They got after us. They whipped us. But we’ve got two games left,” Malzahn said. “We’ll need to rebound.”
The Tigers have done that once before this season, after they lost games at Georgia and South Carolina in the span of three weeks. The second of those defeats, painful as it was, was close and competitive enough that it actually proved to be valuable — it taught Chad Morris and the offense what its identity should be. The result was a three-game winning streak against Ole Miss, LSU and Tennessee.
Rebounding from Saturday’s loss will be more difficult, though. All the issues that dogged Auburn through the inconsistent start to the season – an ineffective rushing offense, poor offensive line play, and a pass defense susceptible to surrendering large chunks – were magnified.
If not for Nix’s rushing touchdown late in the fourth quarter, the loss would have been the most lopsided of Malzahn’s eight-year tenure as coach.
The thing that made Auburn’s offense so effective an efficient during that threegame winning streak – its rushing attack – was stymied at Bryant-Denny Stadium. Tank Bigsby, playing at less than 100% due to a hip injury suffered against Tennessee and running behind an offensive line that started without injured left tackle Alec Jackson and finished without starting right tackle Brodarious Hamm, mustered just 39 yards on 11 carries.
As a whole, Auburn ran for only 120 yards on 42 carries, with more than half of those coming in the fourth quarter once the game was already well out of reach. The team’s 2.9 yards per carry mark broke a streak of five straight game above 4.3.
“When we run the football, we’re a good offense,” Malzahn said. “We weren’t able to do that consistently, and that was tough.”
Everything was Saturday. Auburn faced a double-digit deficit for all but 16 minutes, which forced Nix to attempt the highest number of passes he has since that loss to South Carolina. He completed 23 of 38 for 227 yards and two interceptions. Seth Williams dropped what would have been a 58-yard touchdown before halftime.
And the reason the Tigers trailed so early and so often is that the defense wasn’t able to do what it had done all season, which is bend but don’t break. It broke often against an offense led by Heismancontending quarterback Mac Jones (18 of 27, 302 yards, five touchdowns) and SEC career receiving touchdowns leader DeVonta Smith (seven catches, 171 yards, two scores), surrendering touchdowns of 66, 24, 58, 39 and 24 yards.
“We’ve got to learn from everything that we messed up on,” linebacker Owen Pappoe said. “We can’t fold.”
Maybe that’s the one positive you can take out of Saturday’s game. Auburn never did quit, even though the game was all but over midway through the third quarter.
Alabama’s offense took over inside Auburn’s 10 after Nix’s second interception early in the fourth quarter. Smoke Monday forced a fumble and Jamien Sherwood recovered it. Nix was nearly sacked for a safety on third-and-3 from the 11, but he managed to escape the pressure and run for a first down. He led a 12-play, 96yard touchdown drive.
It didn’t matter to the outcome of the game, and it doesn’t take any sting out of a painful loss to Auburn’s biggest rival. But with the next game just six days away, it’s something.