Containing Auburn’s Bo Nix key for No. 2 Georgia Bulldogs

But there’s one play in particular everybody on both sidelines is still talking about. In fact, the Georgia Bulldogs have spent a good bit of time talking about it this week.

Auburn was trailing 13-0 and facing fourth-and-2 at the LSU 23 late in the second quarter. Nix rolled right. Under heavy pressure, he stopped and reversed field. With the Auburn sideline and two LSU defenders closing in on him, Nix somehow avoided all three, stepped between the two defenders and unleashed a strike 30 yards down the field to tight end Tyler Fromm in the end zone.

The touchdown was the first of three that Auburn would score on the way to a 24-19 come-from-behind victory. None of it would have happened had Nix not been playing quarterback.

The 6-foot-3, 214-pound junior finished with 329 total yards and two touchdowns on 23-of-44 passing for 255 yards and 74 yards on 12 rushes.

“Yeah, I caught a good amount of it,” Georgia senior safety Christopher Smith said of the Auburn-LSU game. “I saw a lot of those great plays that Bo Nix made.”

Said Georgia coach Kirby Smart: “That’s basically all you need to show for the scout report. To do what he did against a really good SEC defense with a lot of tremendous athletes on it, to avoid and escape, and keep your eyes downfield, it puts a lot of pressure on a defense to be able to cover people that long. …

“His ability to extend plays is elite.”

As we all know now, when Smart uses the word “elite” these days, he means it.

Containing Nix and his ad-lib antics will be one of the keys to the No. 2-ranked Bulldogs extending the current run they’re on. Georgia (5-0, 2-0 SEC) has won nine games in a row. It also has won four consecutive in the series known as the Deep’s South’s Oldest Rivalry.

To make it five in a row, they have to make sure Nix’s Houdini act ends at one week.

“It seems like forever he’s been there,” Smart said. “He’s a really good athlete, and he comes from a coaching family background. I’ve known his dad for a really long time, and I’ve got a lot of respect for (Nix) as a competitor and leader. And I think he’s gotten a lot better. He’s doing a much better job of keeping his eyes downfield and making decisions.”

Nix’s father, Patrick Nix, played quarterback for the Tigers from 1992-95 and helped lead them to an 11-0 season in 1993. He’s now a high school coach in Alabama.

Georgia has had success against the younger Nix. The Bulldogs won the past two meetings, with Bo Nix under center 27-6 last year in Athens and 21-14 in November 2019 at Jordan-Hare Stadium. In those games, Nix completed 57% of his passes for 422 yards, one touchdown and one interception. Georgia has sacked him five times and pressured him at least twice that.

But Nix has taken his scramble game to a new level lately. Against LSU, Auburn went 7-for-16 on third downs and 2-for-3 on fourth downs. Eight or more of those conversions were critical plays that changed the outcome of the game.

That can be particularly frustrating for a defense that does everything right only to see the quarterback escape and make a play downfield.

“Scramble drill,” Auburn coach Bryan Harsin said. “That’s something that we installed back in spring. You know, that’s going to happen not just because it’s Bo Nix, because any quarterback in the country is going to have to scramble. So, you want to have some type of answer. His ability to scramble, we saw it. He’s very elusive and did a great job in that game. Again, that’s not how the play’s drawn up, but there’s going to be things that guys are going to do in games where they go and make plays, and that’s exactly what he did.”

The crazy thing is Nix’s performance came just a week after he was benched against Georgia State. LSU transfer T.J. Finley came off the bench to save the day for the Tigers in a 34-24 comeback win.

Former Georgia offensive coordinator Mike Bobo had to make a decision last week about whether to stick with Nix or go with Finley against his former team. Ultimately, he stuck with Nix because of his elusiveness facing the SEC’s top pass-rushing team.

This week, there’s no doubt that Nix will be the quarterback the Bulldogs face. It’s safe to say that he hasn’t seen a defense the likes of the one he will Saturday night on The Plains.

The Bulldogs have put together five of the more dominating defensive games in school history this season. Georgia is allowing an FBS-best 4.6 points per game. It is giving up just 178.6 yards per game. The Bulldogs’ defense actually has scored as many points (16) on two pick-sixes and a safety as they have allowed all season. They’re averaging 3.8 sacks per game. Ninety-three percent of opposing offenses’ drives have ended without a score.

“Their front seven is really good,” Harsin said. “Jordan Davis, Nakobe Dean, those guys are really good players. They’re physical up front. Everybody wants to try to run the football, and you still want to be able to run it, but you’ve got to be able to handle those guys up front.”

Nobody has handled them yet. Then again, Auburn’s offensive line wasn’t exactly stoning LSU’s defense this past weekend, either.

Nix simply was making things happen.

“He’s just got that ‘it’ factor about him,’ Georgia’s Smith said. “He’s able to get away from the D-line and make plays down the field. It’s pretty hard, but I figure the emphasis with us this week is going to be able to plaster down the field when the quarterback gets to running because we can’t focus on him. We’ve got to focus on those receivers because while he’s scrambling he’s looking downfield for receivers to throw the ball to, and we’ve got to be able to cover them. If we come off, he’ll make you pay.”