Late in the fourth quarter, trusting his defense, Auburn coach Gus Malzahn ran the punt team on the field.
Most of the 85,817 fans in Jordan-Hare Stadium booed.
Was it the right call with just more than six minutes to play with Auburn trailing by three points?
At the time, with the Tigers’ bend-but-don’t break defense seemingly one play away from snapping, it didn’t seem like it.
Auburn’s defenders had a different take, however. They wanted the field. They wanted the challenge. They wanted the opportunity to prove they could make a stand.
And they did, getting the ball back for the offense with 1:56 to play.
Then it was quarterback Nick Marshall’s turn to slay the “he can’t win a game with his arm” dragon, right in the heart with a perfectly placed arrow into the hands of tight end C.J. Uzomah just a minute, 46 seconds and 88 yards later.
What happened in between on the Pat Dye Field turf was nothing short of efficiency and poise. Marshall — the running quarterback who can throw it a mile but not hit the guy 10 yards away — found his rhythm, his receivers, and, eventually, the end zone.
“He looked fairly natural there,” Malzahn said. “I mean he was making all the reads, he was making good (throws). I don’t know if he threw a bad ball on that drive, and he led us down the field and that was huge.”
Huge. No doubt.
Huge for so many reasons: It was … Auburn’s first SEC win in 686 days … Auburn’s first SEC win of this season … Auburn’s first 3-0 start in three years … Auburn’s first fourth-quarter comeback since that South Carolina game in Columbia on Oct. 1, 2011 … Auburn’s first chance to prove it was a complete football team.
Oh, it also was Auburn’s first chance to equal last season’s win total.
A new day? Heck, it’s a new team. And Marshall is the leader. Hands down.
The Auburn quarterback delivered when he had to. The moment wasn’t too big. The stage wasn’t too big. And those first-game jitters? Those are long gone.
Just like the Tigers’ SEC losing streak.
Not only did Marshall go 6-for-8 on that last drive and rush for another 19 yards, he didn’t panic. He stayed in the moment, while keeping his teammates there as well.
“He’s a poised guy,” Auburn linebacker Jake Holland said. “He was in a tough situation and led the drive like an experienced pro.”
It wasn’t just on the last drive either.
Marshall didn’t panic when he dropped a snap in the first quarter. Instead, he picked up the ball, rolled to his left a little and hit a streaking Quan Bray down the left sideline for a 76-yard touchdown. Which, by the way, was Auburn’s longest play from scrimmage since 2010.
Then there was the time Marshall’s throw was batted back to him. Instead of letting it get intercepted or fall incomplete, the junior quarterback caught the ball while spinning away from a Mississippi State defender and ran 37 yards and into Bulldogs territory.
Somewhere Al Michaels was screaming, “He did what?”
The most telling sign, though, was how Marshall responded after missing a wide-open Sammie Coates for a sure touchdown earlier in the Tigers’ second-to-last drive. The one that ended in Malzahn sending out the punting unit under a serenade of boos, instead of going for it on fourth-and-3 from the Mississippi State 45.
Marshall came to the sideline and had a choice to make: He could either make up for it or he could lose it.
The junior gathered himself, waited for the defense to do its job, then delivered … all the way down the field.
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