Rapid Reaction: Bo Nix, Auburn strong late in victory over Kentucky
Auburn QB Bo Nix followed off his Freshman of the Year campaign from 2019 by answering the bell on Saturday in the Tigers’ 29-13 win over Kentucky to open the season and avoid what looked like a potential upset for a good portion of the game. Nix, who passed for well over 200 yards, including a trio of scoring passes, mostly notably a gorgeous quarter touchdown to Seth Williams, led the Tigers to victory at Jordan-Hare Stadium with his passing, rushing and even punting skills. Yes, Nix was one of Auburn’s most efficient rushers and hit a couple of coffin-corner punts as well.
After one of those punts, Kentucky scored on its opening possession as sophomore RB Kavosiey Smoke ran 35 yards to finish a 93-yard drive. Auburn quickly answered with a 70-yard march, in which the Tigers got on the scoreboard with a 1-yard scoring run by D.J. Williams with 4:30 to go in the first quarter. Then Auburn caught Kentucky unaware, lining up in the “swinging gate” formation and completing a 2-point play from Grant Loy to tight end John Samuel Shenker. That 8-7 advantage gave the Tigers the lead for good.
Near the end of the half, one of the most bizarre sequences imaginable left both teams angry heading to the locker room. Kentucky RB Chris Rodriguez churned near the end zone, but was ruled short. Televised replays appeared to indicate that Rodriguez reached the end zone, but after review the call stood. On 3rd down, UK quarterback Terry Wilson fired an interception to Auburn DB Roger McCreary, who returned it for an apparent touchdown. During a review as to whether McCreary stepped out of bounds (he did not), Auburn defensive end Derick Hall was called for targeting behind the play, negating the apparent Auburn touchdown. And so the score remained 8-7 at halftime.
The teams traded touchdowns in the third quarter, Auburn’s coming on a 16-yard strike from Nix to Seth Williams. Then Kentucky rallied with an 8-yard scoring pass from Wilson to Akeem Hayes. Kentucky went for two following its score, but Wilson threw the ball away, and Auburn’s scoring advantage was preserved at 15-13.
Kentucky forced a stop to open the fourth quarter, but on a 3rd down play, Wilson fumbled. Auburn’s Jamien Sherwood recovered, leading to Nix hitting Williams for the scoring pass that all but sealed the victory. Williams had over 100 receiving yards by the beginning of the fourth quarter, including his two touchdown grabs. Later in the fourth quarter, Kentucky punter Max Duffy was stopped on a fake punt, and Auburn cashed in a two-play scoring drive capped by Nix’s 21-yard pass to Eli Stove.
Kentucky’s ground game was solid, as they led Auburn in rushing yardage throughout the game, but Wilson looked fairly rusty, with two turnovers and a few other questionable decisions that helped squander some early UK momentum. Kentucky held the ball for 21:02 of the first half but managed only seven points.
Auburn picked up an opening win that is pivotal to its hopes of hanging in the SEC West race, particularly with a matchup with Georgia looming next weekend. Kentucky suffers a season-opening loss which will likely drop the Wildcats out of the AP poll ahead of next week’s home game against Ole Miss.
You picked Auburn to lose.
You can shut up now
Good game Kentucky! The Wildcats played well. Nix is obviously better than he was last season.
Nix was awesome…made some great passes while being tackled. Can’t defend that sort of thing. I thought we played very well, also, except for a couple of really bad decisions and a couple of mistakes at the wrong time. I think we will have a good season, but we will probably be 14 point underdogs against Ole Miss next week.
I think you’ll be like 4 pts dogs at worst
I exaggerate the negative when I am depressed over a big loss.
I think you’ll beat Ole Miss
I think we have the offense to do it this year, if Ole Miss can’t do any better on defense. MSU looked pretty scary, though. We’ll get a lot of practice next two weeks learning to defend the pass.
Can’t really say they looked good. But good enough for today. Williams and Pappoe both had really good games.
Not bad for no spring and multiple players out for fall camp at numerous times, most notably the O line.
Yep. We’ll take it. Good game by UK. Stoops has certainly moved that program out if the cellar.
Everyone kept doubting us because we had an entirely new O line with 1 returning starter. What the critics failed to understand is that our O line was so bad last year that it about couldn’t get any worse. I think they performed well, although the Left edge of the pocket was weak at times. All in all it’s a major improvement over last years O line which allowed Nix to do what he does. He’s got a helluva good arm and accuracy when you have that O line to give him time to work.
Can’t do much worse than the “veteran” line from the last two years. Lord.
Kentucky proved that they’re going to be legit this year. They made some really out of character mistakes, and it cost them big-time in the second half. Nix looks much improved from last year, and his deep balls were pretty good. Auburn’s defense looks like it didn’t skip a beat from last year either. Also, Auburn looks like they might have a good running back again with Shivers.
We’re gonna have to tighten up a but on the defensive front. Gotta watch the ball instead of listening to a hard count. Other than that I agree with every word you said. Should be a fun season. Bama looked like a machine as per usual.
Congratulations to Auburn. I didn’t get to watch the second half but from the stats it doesn’t look like the Cats ran the ball that well. I thought it was interesting that Terry threw 37 passes.
You don’t know what you missed! Try to catch it on SEC Network re-runs if you can’t find a good depressing movie.
So did Auburn just shut down our running game in the 2nd half or did Gran move more towards a passing attack? Think about how many times we’ve seen the Cats throw almost 40 passes.
None of the above, really. Terry fumbled…Demarcus Harris fumbled after trying to extend a caught pass…Duffy faked a punt in the wrong situation. We actually played well, but looked really bad doing it. Threw the game away stringing together some bad mistakes in the fourth quarter. Passing game was OK (65% completions and 233 yards). Running game was OK, too.
As I said all along..Nix and Auburn has the SEC-W to lose. Every hurry, knockdown and sack from last year, will translate into a phenomenal season.
Auburn 10-0 if Nix stays healthy.
Defense made the right adjustments at half and came out much sharper. Offensively we were rusty as to be expected but Bo and team is obviously all in with the chad offense. With the limited practice with the all the young guys we have on the o-line staying composed through the good and bad is gonna be key. Take advantage of the other teams mistakes, and don’t make those mistakes ourselves. We did all that pretty well, and came out with a solid win.
Kentucky played a great game though honestly. Really just those mental mistakes
I was very impressed with the offensive line. The question is, can they block Georgia next week? Jaylin Simpson, Ze’Vian Capers, and a few other freshmen did very well today. Linebackers need to flow a little better to stop the run. Otherwise, we looked really good.
The offense proved it could be very good. War Eagle!
Good luck next week. Expect GA to be getter next week, but it should be one of the better games.
*better.
All the credit to Auburn, my Cats pooped the bed and big time quarterbacks make the plays to win. Congrats Auburn! Good luck the rest of the way. Ole miss just became real scary to Wildcat fans, next week is a must win or we turn back into Kentucky Football. Man it hurts
I had the same feeling for a while, like I usually do after a game like this, but after a while I realized that we looked pretty good for the most part. The bad stuff we did is all correctable.
Congrats to the Tigers. Can see they have high level talent across the board. Was worried all the talk of UK upsetting them would motivate them to play their “A” game and they did, or close to it for a first game out. UK or most any team not going to win in the SEC by making costly mistakes. Not sure why we passed as much as we did. Thought with our O line we would try to run at AU much more. Does anyone have a reasonable explanation on how the Refs made that call (even after review) on the the UK touchdown that wasn’t? Go CATS!!!
I thought he was in. I have no idea what to make of that call. It was the wrong spot if they allege he was already down. That whole thing was just a clusterf&%$. Couple that with the questionable targeting call, which personally I agree with,and you have a whole mess of “What the hell?” moments in one game.
War Eagle!
UK fans are a classy bunch. Best of luck to you guys for the rest of the season.
+1
May we meet again in December. lol