AUBURN, Ala. - They say only sports can make the kind of sound that boomed from the loudest village on the Plains on Saturday evening, but maybe this noise went somewhere beyond even sports in general. Here came the sound attainable only through a brew of contempt and surprise and Iron Bowl. Here came the sound of Auburn as it played absolutely like it belonged alongside the dynastic, No. 1 Alabama.
And here came the sound that accompanied the upheaval of the national college football season. It thundered through No. 6 Auburn’s 26-14 win in the 82nd Iron Bowl. It seemed determined to chase the Tigers (10-2) all the way to next weekend and to Atlanta, where they will play against No. 7 Georgia as the Southeastern Conference West Division champion for the first time in four years. It seemed perfectly at pleasure, this noise, with a College Football Playoff picture that has morphed into a puzzle with Alabama’s regular season closed down suddenly at 12-1.
The noise carried through Auburn’s offensive dynamism, which lasted pretty much from start to finish with but a few pockets of so-so. It reveled in the mistakes of a well-drilled Alabama - a rare fumble, two botched snaps, an offside penalty by the punt team that granted a first down, a bobbled field goal snap. Most evocatively, the great sound echoed through Jordan-Hare Stadium with six minutes to play, as the fans chanted the name of a great college running back as trainers tended to Kerryon Johnson on the ground after his latest hard venture into the thick Alabama defense, for his 30th hard carry, his 104 hard yards.
With a 12-play, 69-yard drive that ended with Johnson crashing into the end zone from the 1-yard line with three minutes left in the third quarter, Auburn took a 20-14 lead. The roar built. With a seven-play, 74-yard drive made of three large plays and quarterback Jarrett Stidham’s 16-yard venture to the end zone, Auburn took a 26-14 lead. The roar mushroomed. When Auburn chased down Alabama’s madly elusive quarterback, Jalen Hurts, for a sack with 2:43 left, the roar seemed to double.
Two weeks after throttling No. 1 Georgia by 40-17 here, Auburn put a big flashlight on the recent vulnerabilities of No. 1 Alabama.
The roar figures to keep going in parts for years.
Tucked between lay exhibits of just how much want filled the Plains after Auburn had lagged behind Alabama in general the past three seasons, look also to two plays. See Stephen Roberts’ open-field, one-on-one tackle on Bo Scarbrough in the third quarter, 1 yard from a first down. See also Carlton Davis’ banging tackle on DeVonta Smith in the fourth quarter, less than 1 yard from a first down.
On such moments does momentum stall, and in other moments did Auburn’s momentum collect, adding to a game that teemed with enough Iron Bowl turns to spur the inevitable slews of Iron Bowl conversations. Alabama’s maestro punter, J.K. Scott, had placed Auburn on the 6-yard line early on. Auburn then went some 94 yards in 12 of the niftier plays around, with Stidham popping passes left and right, Nate Craig-Myers loose in a seam near midfield to get one of them for 25 yards, Darius Slayton wriggling 23 yards up the sideline with another.
It ended with a wildcat formation and a jump pass, from star running back Johnson, to Craig-Myers, behind a flummoxed Alabama defense, that rare phrase. Auburn took a 7-0 lead. The noise built.
Soon, it flooded the place with 2:43 left in the first quarter when Derrick Brown plucked a fumble from Hurts, just Hurts’s second turnover of the year. Auburn moved craftily again to the Alabama 4-yard line. Right then, Stidham experienced a common human nightmare, searching for his muffed snap through linemen’s legs as it rolled beneath Alabama behemoth Da’Ron Payne.
Rather than 14-0, the game was on.
So Hurts heaved a 36-yard touchdown pass that went slightly left and was filled with hope, to Jerry Jeudy, who fulfilled the hope by timing it and catching it behind a defender in the end zone for a 7-7 tie. Auburn would have 221 yards by halftime against a No. 1-ranked defense that on average yields only 244.
So Alabama put on one of the drives that make it look above the rest, while trailing 10-7 just out of halftime, a 79-yard, five-play show of muscle that had Damien Harris loose through the right for 31 yards and Scarbrough streaming into the end zone through the left from 21.
So Auburn pieced together two drives of third-down prowess, mastering three third downs on the go-ahead touchdown march of 69 yards and looking like the composed big boy as it got 10 third-quarter points to lead 20-14.
So Alabama got downfield and celebrated a touchdown it did not get, because Hurts’s scrambling, wild, tipped throw to the back of the end zone from the 17-yard line had brushed the ground before tight end Hale Hentges scooped it up. So the noise boomed, when the officials got the replay word and reversed the touchdown call.
So Alabama couldn’t catch a field goal snap.
So there went Auburn, through 74 yards of huge plays: a terrific, bouncing, 16-yard thicket of a run from Johnson, a double-reverse flea-flickery thing where Stidham threw to a rambling Davis for 23, Stidham’s bold 16-yard trip through the left to the end zone. Auburn led 26-14, just as it would end.
And the noise ...
