AU-OLE MISS: Tigers break through on the road with important win
By TIM GAYLE
Two teams that needed to find a way to secure a win turned to the running game on Saturday at Vaught-Hemingway Stadium. In the end, though, it was a 58-yard touchdown pass from Bo Nix to Seth Williams that gave Auburn a 35-28 win over Ole Miss on Saturday.
“I’m really proud of our team,” Auburn coach Gus Malzahn said. “It was a total team effort. We played good, hard-nosed Auburn football, running the football, stopping the run, picking each other up. Our guys really played 60 minutes today, overcame some adversity.”
The Tigers overcame an Ole Miss touchdown with a little less than six minutes remaining that left the Tigers on the short end of the scoreboard and yet another controversial play on the ensuing kickoff, finally finding the winning combination on a Nix-to-Williams pass with 71 seconds remaining to rebound from the previous week’s disappointing loss at South Carolina.
Ole Miss coach Lane Kiffin called it a “very disappointing loss, kind of different from the other ones as far as having the lead late. Either side can win it. The defense stops, the offense has the ball. So make three first downs, make them use their timeouts and win the game. It’s everything that you want.
“Then they stop us and defense has a shot. If we stop them, we win the game. So both sides having a shot is pretty discouraging. Usually, you just get one shot. So if either one does their job, we’re sitting here with a really big win versus a very talented team.”
Ole Miss (1-4) would have one last shot, driving into Auburn territory in the closing seconds before Matt Corral’s pass in the red zone was dropped by tight end Kenny Yeboah.
“Unfortunate that Kenny drops that or it would have been a crazy ending there,” Kiffin said. “I felt like he was down at the 10-yard line so we would have had one play with three seconds left to win the game. We would’ve went for two, to try to win the game.”
Ole Miss ran for a season-best 283 yards and converted 10 of 16 third downs, a winning formula that changed the offensive philosophy from the previous week when Arkansas converted six Corral interceptions into a victory.
“It was good that we had answers to the issues last week,” Kiffin said. “These guys (Auburn) copied them, like they should, and came out, which they normally don’t do, and dropped eight (defenders into pass coverage). We had some new runs, some new wrinkles. We knew if we didn’t do that, we were going to see that all year long. We actually ran them out of it.”
The back-and-forth game swung to the Rebels midway through the quarter when Jerrion Ealy scored on a 5-yard run and Luke Logan kicked the extra point for a 28-27 lead. On the ensuing kickoff, Auburn’s Shaun Shivers attempted to field the ball at the 9 and it bounced by him into the end zone. Shivers backtracked and chased the ball to the 1-yard line, then gave up as the ball bounced into the end zone and the Rebels’ Tylan Knight recovered it, believing it had skipped off of the fingers on Shivers’ left hand.
Referee Marc Curles quickly informed the homecoming crowd of 15,037 that the ball had not been touched by Shivers.
“They said they did (review it),” Kiffin said. “They review everything, supposedly. I go to the guy and he says they looked at it and said they didn’t see anything. Why they didn’t stop and look closer, I have no idea. That’s the equivalent of a scoring play, which they stop all the time for forever.”
The two teams played evenly, with Auburn earning 462 total yards and Ole Miss with 444, but one of the biggest reasons for the Auburn victory was the Tigers’ error-free ball, something that was missing at South Carolina. Nix was 23 of 30 for 238 yards and a touchdown, along with 52 rushing yards and a touchdown on 10 carries. Williams was his favorite target, catching eight passes for 150 yards and, of course, the game-winning touchdown.
“It looked like we were in ‘man’ and got beat,” Kiffin said of Williams’ catch and run. “Very unfortunate. I’m not making any excuses, but the game’s on the line, I look out there and ‘nickel’ and the right corner are two people that, a week ago, were on offense. That’s just the situation we’re in. We’re actually telling them what to do during the game. You know, it’s like high school.”
Auburn freshman Tank Bigsby recorded his third consecutive 100-yard game, rushing for 129 yards on 24 carries with two touchdowns. Bigsby became just the third Auburn freshman to record three consecutive 100-yard games, joining Bo Jackson (1982) and Michael Dyer (2010).
Auburn (3-2) returns home to play LSU on CBS next Saturday, while Ole Miss continues to search for answers as the Rebels head to Vanderbilt next week.
“There’s no pixie dust,” Kiffin said. “You’ve got to make more plays than they do and execute the situations. That’s what winning teams do. I’d like to think they think we’re going to win, but winning teams have that feeling – ‘hey, we’ve got the ball, we’re going to go win’ or ‘they’ve got the ball, we’re up, we’re going to stop them to win.’ It’s a mentality.”