Well, what do you know? Auburn ran the ball more than they have all season on Saturday, and the Tigers emerged from Oxford with a vital win, 35-28 over Ole Miss, to keep their season on track.

The formula was simple. Run it 47 times, don’t ask too much of Bo Nix, and when in doubt, find a way to get the ball in the hands of the best player on the field, Seth Williams. The result? A season high in points and a morale-saving victory.

All week, Gus Malzahn hammered home one idea: Auburn needed to return to playing “hard-nosed” football. And that’s exactly what the offense did.

While the defense didn’t exactly bloody anyone’s nose, Chad Morris’ offense set the tone early on the ground. After going 3-and-out on their opening series, Auburn marched on a 14-play, 95-yard drive that consisted of 11 rushes and a Tank Bigsby 4-yard touchdown run.

On a wet, sloppy field, it was only logical to continue to pound the rock and use a methodical dink-and-dunk offense against an Ole Miss defense that didn’t show many signs of life.

It was nothing splashy or exciting, but it worked. And for an Auburn team looking for the smallest glimmer of hope with its offense, facing D.J. Durkin’s Rebels defense was quite the remedy.

Nix finished 23-of-30 for 238 yards and a touchdown, but that box score can be a bit misleading. Of his 9 first-half completions, 6 were behind the line of scrimmage. It wasn’t until the third quarter when he took his first shot down field, another trademark 50-50 prayer to Williams for 38 yards. Then again, is any throw to the 6-3 wideout truly a 50-50 ball?

Until the final drive, when Nix was forced to become a passer, the Auburn QB looked as comfortable as he has all season, effectively running zone reads, spending more time in the pocket and more consistently throwing off his back foot.

Nix, who entered Week 5 completing just 56.8 percent of his passes and averaging 6.6 yards an attempt, had his finest four quarters of 2020, completing 76.7 percent of his passes and averaging 7.9 yards an attempt.

It was clear that Morris had a plan to implement the QB run — Nix carried the ball 10 times for 52 yards and a touchdown — and regardless of how well it was going, Auburn wasn’t going to abandon the approach. With Rebels defenders focusing on the threat of a QB keeping the ball, Bigsby and Shaun Shivers had their best day as a tag-team to date.

Every rusher on the Tigers averaged north of 5 yards a carry (with the exception of punter Oscar Chapman, who had to fall on a poor snap), as the team rushed for 224 yards. Removing the botched punt that lost 25 yards, Auburn averaged 5.4 yards a carry.

Bigsby, who had a 100-yard kick return wiped away by a holding call, carried the load, as he has much of the season dating back to the Oct. 10 win over Arkansas. His 129 yards and 2 touchdowns allowed Nix to be a competent game manager for 57 minutes until the final drive.

And when the QB who rose to prominence with a clutch performance against Oregon in 2019 was asked again to step up, that’s exactly what he did.

Yes, Williams deserves a lion’s share of the praise for the game-winning 42-yard touchdown reception, but it was a beautifully thrown, back-shoulder ball from Nix standing poised in the pocket that gave Williams the opportunity to show why he is so frequently the feature of many SportsCenter highlight reels.

On the one hand, Auburn should feel good about this win. The only footage of Nix and Williams on the sideline this week involved a smiling fist bump, not a minor kerfuffle. The season was at the risk of spiraling out of control as hot-seat talks ratcheted up.

On the other hand, that Auburn defense looked lousy on the final drive and is perhaps a Kenny Yeboah drop away from this being a completely different story. Same goes for the botched punt. All of that goes without mentioning another potentially missed call by the referees, when Shivers may have fumbled a kickoff that Ole Miss recovered in the end zone.

The fumble wasn’t called, and the Tigers prevailed. Auburn finally took the advice of their vocal fan base and ran the danged ball. And, well, what do you know? The Tigers, who very well could be 1-4, stand halfway through the season over .500.