Two old friends — one from just a month ago and another from yesteryear — returned to Jordan-Hare Stadium just in time for an Auburn team desperate for a pick-me-up.
The deep-threat passing game — last seen somewhere near Knoxville the last time Auburn beat somebody — opened up unseen holes and provided big play after big play Saturday against No. 25 Ole Miss.
That stingy Auburn defense, which has made some big plays here and there throughout the 2009 season, but really hadn’t camped out for a full game since sometime last year, overcame the loss of one of its biggest leaders and made sure all the good things that were happening on offense wouldn’t go unrewarded.
Auburn’s 33-20 victory over the Rebels was everything but a Navy Nightmare, providing the Tigers some relief from their three-game losing streak and a reason to believe that 5-0 start wasn’t a fluke after all.
“It doesn’t surprise anybody in our locker room that that’s who they are,” coach Gene Chizik said. “I thought tonight proved to a lot of people that we were going to contend and fight.”
The Tigers, at 6-3 and 3-3 in the SEC, are now officially bowl-eligible. It was a perceived foregone conclusion with next week’s game against Furman on the schedule, but it registered as an additional, feel-good incentive for beating one of the hotter teams in the SEC.
“We’ve got Christmas plans,” defensive end Antonio Coleman said. “That’s a blessing.”
“Blessed” was how Chizik described the Tigers’ upset victory, too. But, really, outside of one series and two big plays Auburn would love to have back, the Tigers simply outplayed the Rebels, who have yo-yoed through their highly anticipated season.
A number of players throughout the week said all the Tigers needed to overcome the litany of issues that plagued them throughout their three-game slide was a spark — just something little to go in their favor to rekindle everything that went so right in September.
It turns out they needed two.
Walk-on Chris Humphries jarred the ball loose from Ole Miss’ Jesse Grandy on the game’s opening kickoff. Two or three Auburn players put their body on the ball, but the Rebels maintained possession, albeit pinned just yards away from their own end zone.
The Rebels scored 10 plays and 94 yards later on a 7-yard Jevan Snead touchdown pass to Andy Hartmann, silencing a late-arriving 84,756 fans.
An audible “here we go again,” might have been heard from outside the stadium if passers-by craned their ears hard enough, but the perspective was different on the Auburn sidelines, players said.
“When things start going bad usually somebody starts putting their head down and giving up,” cornerback Walt McFadden said. “When it happened on our side of the ball, we had seniors and leaders walking up and down or sideline saying, ‘It’s not over. We’re not giving up. We’re going to keep playing.’”
The big play that opened everything up for Auburn’s offense came midway through the second quarter. Chris Todd, previously known as a “dinker and dunker” during the Tigers’ rough patch, hit a double-covered Terrell Zachery with a 42-yard pass down the right hash.
It didn’t put points on the board — Darvin Adams’ 29-yard touchdown catch three plays later did that — but it kept Ole Miss’ defense off balance the rest of the game.
Holes that were marginal in the first half opened up wide for tailback Ben Tate, who finished with 144 yards and a long touchdown run. When Tate got motoring, life became easier on Todd, who connected on a number of downfield passes to finish with 212 yards.
“We were just kind of able to hit them with the one-two punch,” tackle Andrew McCain said.
A first half of jabs morphed into an all-out slugfest in the third quarter, which spanned almost an hour of real time and ended with 36 combined points.
The Tigers scored three unanswered touchdowns before the midpoint of the quarter — two the conventional, big-play way and the other from a fluky McFadden interception return for a touchdown. Ole Miss answered with two of its own in less than 2 minutes — one coming on a Grandy 82-yard kickoff return and the other on a 79-yard Dexter McCluster run.
The bizarre quarter swayed back in Auburn’s favor for the final time on the subsequent extra point, when Demond Washington ran back a Coleman block for a 2-point conversion.
“That is a great example of how those small things in a game of you playing hard, and doing those things all of the time on every play never knowing when that opportunity is going to come,” Chizik said. “I think that was a huge, huge point for us.”
“Huge” was how a number of players described the pass rush that disrupted Ole Miss quarterback Jevan Snead into an ineffective game overall and a fourth quarter that ended in two Ole Miss punts and McFadden’s game-clinching second interception.
Auburn’s offense, worthy of a breather anyways, took the quarter off, too. Its work through the first three quarters — and a week of self-confidence building — sufficed.
“We needed this,” McFadden said. “Maybe some of us were feeling sorry for ourselves. Today they showed that we believe in each other, we know we can play.”
agribble@oanow.com | 737-2561
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