Auburn analyst: Ex-Tigers QB a Heisman candidate, Deion’s ‘what they don’t want’
Opelika-Auburn News editor and Auburn football beat reporter Justin Lee had several Week 4 thoughts following an afternoon slate that saw the Tigers get blown out by Texas A&M 27-10 at Kyle Field, a Bo Nix-led Oregon throttling Deion Sanders’s Colorado Buffaloes 42-6, Nick Saban’s Alabama Crimson Tide hold off Lane Kiffin’s Ole Miss Rebels, and several SEC contenders like LSU and Georgia look beatable.
His chief thoughts: Nix is a definitive Heisman candidate, Coach Prime is exactly who the powers that be don’t want him to be, Kiffin may never beat his former mentor Saban, and the SEC may be down bad a bit in 2023.
“Takes no one follows me for: Kiffin probably can’t beat Saban at Ole Miss,” Lee wrote. “Nix didn’t have a pick until this game. 11:1 TD-INT. He’s going to New York. Sanders is accountable, respectful; really all the things they don’t want him to be. The SEC is super down confirmed.”
Bo Nix wasn’t having fun anymore with Auburn football in 2021, prompting Oregon transfer
For those still yearning for Nix, just remember that it may not have been possible for the Pinson product to be as good on the Plains as he is in Eugene, Oregon. Nix is happy now; something he wasn’t during his final season at Auburn in 2021.
“Last year, I was just kind of over it,” Nix told CBS Sports’s Dennis Dodd in October 2022. “Each week it was something else. There was, quite frankly, nothing I could do about it. I just remember kind of being miserable. It wasn’t fun anymore.”
Unfortunately, Nix never got to see what AU was like under interim head coach Carnell “Cadillac” Williams in 2022 and under Hugh Freeze now. But there’s no point in wondering about it too much.
As the great Jake Owen says, “Time flies, if things change that’s life.” Time has flown enough to where Nix is now on the doorstep of the Heisman Award, but while focusing and having fun in his second season at Oregon.
Auburn football is better off without Deion Sanders
Coach Prime’s antics are perfect for a Colorado program that badly needed a rebrand after years of futility in Boulder. Sanders was the perfect superstar to spruce up interest in a formerly great Big 12 team that has struggled in the Pac-12 for the better part of the last decade.
Auburn, even when bad, has an audience, though. And a good portion of that audience wouldn’t have appreciated the pomp and circumstance that surrounds “Prime Time.”
Undoubtedly, Coach Prime would’ve recruited the talent to East Central Alabama, but there would’ve been the same sort of toxicity he’s dealing with currently; just amplified ten-fold due to the SEC spotlight as Alabama and Georgia’s blood rival.