The drought is out. Auburn football is no longer winless in the new millennium in Death Valley, knocking off LSU 24-19 in a performance that actually could be the start of a Dark Horse Heisman campaign if the Tigers can win enough key games in the final 2/3s of the season.
And Bo Nix could continue to flash the sort of highlight reel heroics on display Saturday night in Tiger Stadium.
It’s as if Nix told TJ Finley to hold his beer after the first-year Auburn QB engineered the comeback of the year (at that point, anyway) last weekend at Jordan-Hare Stadium against Georgia State.
The narrative of Nix not being up to the task of leading this team has now been put to bed. Ending a 22-year drought against an LSU team that began the year as the #16 team in the country in one of the toughest places to play in the country earns you that right.
After all of the doubts Tiger fans had coming into this game, and even the doubts national college football insiders had as the events were unfolding, Nix’s actions were nothing short of heroic.
Even “Mr. College Football”, former Atlanta Journal-Constitution reporter and Georgia alum Tony Barnhart agrees with that sentiment:
And the day ends with Auburn going to LSU and winning when no one thought they could. And Bo Nix was a hero. Man I love college football.
— Tony Barnhart (@MrCFB) October 3, 2021
Auburn football is now in the driver’s seat to have a winning season
A loss to LSU heading into what should be a very difficult matchup with a Georgia team that looked pretty intimidating knocking the doors off of Arkansas would have been damning.
Instead, Nix put the team on track to have a winning record in Bryan Harsin’s first season, assuming he could pull off three victories against a group that includes Ole Miss, Arkansas, Texas A&M, South Carolina, and Mississippi State. Upsets over Georgia or Alabama would seal the deal on a successful first year on the Plains for Harsin.
Without Nix’s masterpiece of a comeback–which included being benched for the second straight week for a Finley drive in the second–the sky would be falling.
Now? Auburn football fans are celebrating a win over LSU and partying like it’s 1999 at Toomer’s Corner.