The 2019 Auburn football team is one that fans yearn for in the aftermath of two consecutive six-win seasons.
Bo Nix, the second-generation gunslinger who outlasted the other two options in the QB room in the summer, led the Tigers to nine wins in the regular season with losses in ‘the Swamp’, Death Valley, at home against Georgia, and in the Outback Bowl to Minnesota.
The 9-4 season included a home Iron Bowl win, blowout wins over Mississippi State and Arkansas, and a triumph over Texas A&M at Kyle Field.
Opelika-Auburn News beat reporter Justin Lee doesn’t think that Malik Willis, who has since become a top NFL Draft prospect, would have made Auburn football any better back in 2019:
There's no way the 2019 season would've been any better for Auburn with Malik Willis as the quarterback.
— Justin Lee (@ByJustinLee) April 28, 2022
They beat Oregon and Alabama and only lost at the Swamp, at the national champions in Death Valley, and to Georgia. He wouldn't have done any better.
I don't buy this as some fork in the trajectory of Auburn's program. They'd have been fine, maybe. Probably worse.
— Justin Lee (@ByJustinLee) April 28, 2022
Auburn's path has been affected by so much more than the quarterback play. That's just the lazy one thing fans look at.
Bo Nix could prove Auburn football fans wrong in 2022
A large portion of Tiger fans decided to scapegoat all of the team’s problems on Bo Nix. The chatter grew so loud and toxic that Nix decided to take to the transfer portal, with a helping hand from the T.J. Finley transfer portal addition last may.
Nix now has a chance to show out in Oregon and prove that he was never the source of Auburn’s problems. On the flipside, whoever ends up under center on the Plains can prove that the Tigers can win without him.