The best thing about Auburn’s season opener last week against Louisville was that the Tigers didn’t lose it, holding on to beat Bobby Petrino’s Cardinals, 31-24.

However, the worst – and most worrisome aspect – of the game was the play of quarterback Jeremy Johnson, who completed just 11 of his 21 passes for 137 yards, one touchdown and three interceptions. He also ran five times for 11 yards and a TD.

But as scary as Johnson’s performance was, it’s far too early to panic and write him off. It was only his third career start, and it came against one of the country’s top defenses and coordinators in Todd Grantham.

Obviously, things should be much easier for Johnson as he approaches Saturday’s home game against Jacksonville State, but the matchup against the Cardinals – as difficult as it turned out to be – will only serve as excellent preparation for new defensive coordinator Kevin Steele and the LSU Tigers when Auburn visits Death Valley on Sept. 19.

It’s a pretty good bet that Johnson was pumped with adrenaline while making his season debut. After all, this is a guy who bided his time, waiting patiently for two years while Nick Marshall ran Gus Malzahn’s offense. And when you consider the fact that the teams Johnson faced in his previous two starts – Western Carolina and Arkansas – don’t have Louisville-caliber defenses, the 6-foot-5, 240-pound junior was thrown into the fire, but it’s apparent that his poor performance hasn’t doused his confidence.

“I was just trying to make the big plays too early in the game,” Johnson said after Auburn’s season-opening win. “That’s a mental mistake by me. I’m going to learn from it. “I know that’s not me and I know I could have performed a lot better.”

The promising thing is that offensive coordinator Rhett Lashlee seems to have already shaken off Johnson’s opening outing and apparently is even more confident about his quarterback than Johnson is about himself.

“Jeremy’s going to be fine,” Lashlee said. “I’ve got as much confidence, if not more, in Jeremy than I had before the game. Jeremy was pressing. He was trying to make some plays. That happens. He did make several uncharacteristic decisions of himself. He knows that cost us and we can’t do that.

“There’s nobody more disappointed and ready to atone for their mistakes than Jeremy, and I think the best thing is you learn from your mistakes in a win, it’s a lot more fun than learning from them in a loss.”

That’s the most crucial thing to remember here: Johnson made multiple mistakes, but the Tigers still emerged with a victory. His 33-yard touchdown pass to Ricardo Louis was a thing of beauty, and he ended up connecting with six different targets. Plus, if it weren’t for a holding penalty, Johnson’s 56-yard scoring strike to Jason Smith would have put Auburn up by four TDs late in the third quarter. Unfortunately for the Tigers, that possession ended with one of Johnson’s three picks.

Johnson’s struggles in the opener could be a blessing in disguise for several reasons. For one thing, Johnson arguably was the most hyped quarterback entering the season — bovada.com gave him 12-1 odds to win the Heisman (the same odds it gave Georgia running back Nick Chubb, by the way). Now that the hype machine is on hiatus and Johnson has been brought back down to earth and reality, he can exhale and focus on getting better and continuing to win games.

Plus, with Johnson’s season-opening jitters behind him and the fact that his next opponent is an FCS one, the game should slow down for him from this point on, which should help him improve his decision-making and make him feel less pressure to force some of this throws. And finally, for his and Auburn’s sake, it’s entirely possible that the Louisville game could be the worst one Johnson plays this season, which makes getting it out of the way even more significant.

In addition to the upcoming LSU game, Auburn has a four-contest stretch that includes games against Mississippi State, San Jose State and Kentucky. It’s clearly not Murderers’ Row, but that run will definitely help Johnson prepare for the worst part of the Tigers’ schedule — a four-game gauntlet that includes visits to Arkansas and Texas A&M in addition to home tilts against Ole Miss and Georgia.

That’s enough to make any inexperienced SEC quarterback sink. But barring an injury or any other unforeseen circumstance, Johnson will have had a half-season under his belt before Auburn’s biggest games of the season, and hopefully by then, all of the red flags he raised against Louisville will be distant memories. Give Johnson time — patience has worked before, even on The Plains.

Pat Sullivan threw five interceptions in the A-Day game the spring before he went on to win the Heisman Trophy in 1971. This is not to say that Johnson will win college football’s biggest award — particularly not after how he struggled against the Cardinals — he clearly has a long way to go. But it’s important to remember that it’s way too soon to second-guess Malzahn’s decision to start the season with Johnson at QB.

After all, Sullivan was on the committee that helped Malzahn get Auburn’s coaching job, and that hire has more than worked out so far. Sullivan obviously believed in Malzahn, who believes in Johnson. Auburn fans should still have faith in Johnson as well, especially just one game into the season.