AUBURN NEVER QUIT BELIEVING
AUBURN, Ala. – Bo Nix still had the football in his hands.
Yes, that one. The one he received from center Nick Brahms when he took the knee that officially ended the Iron Bowl and sent a sizable portion of the sellout crowd of 87,451 fans inside Jordan-Hare Stadium flooding onto Pat Dye Field to celebrate Auburn’s wild 48-45 victory over Alabama.
The true freshman quarterback took it with him through the crowd of students pounding on players’ shoulder pads and singing “Dixieland Delight” as loud as their voices could go. He took it with him into the postgame media room, keeping it close as he answered questions from a crowd of reporters so large that many were standing on chairs just to get a view of him.
Nix put the ball down once during that time, but only briefly so he could take off his jersey and shoulder pads. No one had touched it but him.
“You can fantasize at home in your room about taking a knee against Alabama in your freshman year at the end of the game, and that actually happened,” he said as the party outside shifted off the field. “So it’s just a surreal moment. There’s nothing like. I’ve never experienced it, anything like it.”
There weren’t many outside Auburn (9-3) who thought Nix and his teammates would experience that last weekend. Not this year, at least. The narrative entering the 84th playing of the Iron Bowl was all about Alabama (10-2).
It didn’t matter that the visitors didn’t have star quarterback Tua Tagovailoa (out for the season with a hip injury), a single win over a top-25 opponent or a chance to win the Southeastern Conference West – they were still the Crimson Tide, which meant they still had a legitimate shot to reach the College Football Playoff.
“It was perfect timing. Perfect timing against ’Bama, man,” senior defensive end Marlon Davidson said. “Knocked them out of the Playoff. Crushed their dreams. That’s amazing.”
You could point to any number of things as the reason the Tigers were able to do what they did.
The offense finally put together four quarters against a good defense. Nix put Auburn on the board early with a 7-yard rushing touchdown late in the first quarter. Running back Shaun Shivers scored what proved to be the game winner from 11 yards out near the midway point of the fourth quarter, knocking Xavier McKinney’s helmet right off his head along the way. Anders Carlson, who had missed his previous six field goal attempts of 40 or more yards, hit four.
The defense gave up more points (38, with the other seven coming on special teams) than
VASHA HUNT/AP it had in any of its first 11 games. But it also scored its first two touchdowns of the season.
And the opponent, Alabama, made mistake after mistake. The interceptions were the two biggest, but they weren’t the only ones. Place kicker Joseph Bulovas missed a 30-yard field goal that would have tied the score. The team committed 13 penalties, including an illegal substitution on 4th-and-4 late in the fourth quarter that gave Auburn a first down and effectively ended the game.
It didn’t matter that the Tigers had already lost three SEC games to longstanding rivals Florida, LSU and Georgia in games that felt frustratingly similar, with the defense playing great and the offense not measuring up. They still felt this game was out there for them.
Gus Malzahn is now just the second coach to defeat Nick Saban three times since he’s been at Alabama, and he’s done it in seven seasons. He joked about another instance of one second being put back on the clock on the Iron Bowl, which again worked to Auburn’s advantage. And that penalty that cost the Crimson Tide one final possession in the fourth quarter? Malzahn baited them into it.
“We’ve got coach’s back,” Shivers said. “People seem to put everything on my head coach. We play against great teams. It was a good team we just played against, a team just as good as us, just as talented as us. Beating them at home, it’s a big thing. And a big thing for our coach.”
An Iron Bowl win can erase, or at least diminish, any frustrations that preceded it. It can spark a celebration on the field with thousands of the team’s supporters. It can lead to a hefty fine from the SEC, too, for fans entering the playing surface, but it’s one the university will happily pay to beat its biggest rival.