We Beat Bama - Auburn 26, Alabama 14

Tonight, Alabama’s basketball team played Minnesota. Their entire bench got ejected and they had to play with three players on the floor against five Golden Gophers.

Alabama’s football team may have been playing with three players as well tonight inside Jordan-Hare stadium.

Auburn dominated the top-ranked Crimson Tide 26-14, racking up 408 total yards and getting All-American performances from Jarrett Stidham and Kerryon Johnson in the Tigers’ biggest win over Alabama since 1969.

It’s the second win over a top-ranked team on the Plains this season, after Auburn beat Georgia 40-17 two weeks ago. In those two victories, the Tigers beat number one teams by an average of 17.5 points.

Today, Auburn had its most impressive performance of the season, forcing the normally-steady Alabama Crimson Tide into mistake after mistake.

The Tigers scored their first touchdown late in the first quarter, after a good Alabama punt that placed Auburn at their own five-yard line. Auburn went 95 yards in 12 plays, and Kerryon Johnson tossed a jump pass to Nate Craig-Myers on third and goal for the opening score of the game.

Alabama tied the game early on in the second quarter on a jump ball from Jalen Hurts to Jerry Jeudy, and Auburn answered at the end of the half with a short Daniel Carlson field goal to give the Tigers a 10-7 lead going into the locker room.

Out of the intermission, adjustments for the Tide paid off, as they marched right down the field in just five plays, getting a 21-yard Bo Scarbrough touchdown run to take their first and only lead of the game at 14-10. Auburn answered with another field goal from Carlson after a 52-yard drive to pull back within one point.

After a defensive stop, Auburn got the ball back at their own 31, and moved down the field, converting three third downs and getting a one-yard touchdown run from Kerryon Johnson to take a 20-14 lead with three minutes left in the third quarter.

Alabama drove down on its next possession, but was forced to try a field goal. A bad snap totally blew up the attempt, and the Tigers took over on downs in the final minute of the third quarter. After a 15-yard run by Johnson and a 25-yard completion to Ryan Davis, the Tigers found themselves in range for another field goal, but Jarrett Stidham carried around left end for 16 yards and a touchdown to push the margin out to 26-14. The two-point conversion failed, and Auburn led by twelve.

On the next drive for Alabama, the Jordan-Hare crowd started to impose its will. On the Tigers’ side of the field, a third down went for negative yardage after a mistimed and errant snap, and then a fourth down also resulted in major lost yardage due to the same thing. Fortunately for Alabama, Auburn had twelve men on the field on that fourth down, and got to retry the conversion, but Jalen Hurts’ three-yard completion to Robert Foster wasn’t enough on 4th and 4.

Auburn milked three minutes off the clock on the next drive, and Alabama failed on a fourth down on its next to last drive that ended with a little more than two minutes on the clock. Having used all of their timeouts, the Tide couldn’t stop the clock, and Auburn ran out the clock on the way to the win.

Overall, the Tiger offense gained 408 yards and ran 78 plays. Jarrett Stidham went 22-29 on the day for 237 yards, while rushing for 51 yards and a touchdown. Kerryon Johnson ran for a gritty and hard-earned 104 yards and a touchdown on 30 carries, to go along with his passing touchdown to Craig-Myers. Ryan Davis was the main target for Stidham, catching 11 passes for 139 yards on the afternoon.

The Auburn defense held Alabama to 377 total yards, limiting Jalen Hurts to just 177 yards passing on 13-12 attempts, to go with a touchdown.

Auburn wins the SEC West with a 7-1 conference record and will play Georgia next Saturday at Mercedes-Benz Stadium for the SEC Championship. The winner of that game all but assures themselves a spot in the College Football Playoff.