BATON ROUGE, Louisiana–After LSU’s defense was burned by Bo Nix a year earlier in Auburn’s rout of the Bayou Bengals at Jordan-Hare Stadium, LSU’s head coach said his team set up its defense to avoid a repeat performance. However, Auburn found a way to win again and in the process won a road game vs. the Bayou Bengals for the first time since 1999.
Despite those plans to contain him, Nix rallied Auburn for a 24-19 victory on Saturday night at Tiger Stadium. The junior completed 23-44 passes for 255 yards and one touchdown with no interceptions. He rushed for 74 yards and one score and did an outstanding job of keeping plays alive with his quick feet when looking for receivers.
“Their quarterback, we couldn’t get him down, “LSU’s Ed Orgeron said. “He made some tremendous plays so give him credit. That was the ball game.
“We couldn’t run the football,” the head coach said. “We couldn’t block well up front. We couldn’t tackle the quarterback.”
Nix and the Tigers drove 92 yards on 11 plays to take their first lead of the night 24-19 with 3:11 to play with Auburn’s quarterback making clutch plays along the way. Freshman running back Jarquez Hunter scored the go-ahead touchdown from a yard out on a second effort run. Hunter said he was impressed with how Nix responded after being benched a week earlier. “He did a great job,” Hunter said. “He just came in and did what he had to do and just made plays.”
Orgeron said it wasn’t a lack of effort and preparation for Nix that was the problem for his team. “We told our tackles to bull-rush,” he said. “We told ends to contain and we put a spy on him. We kind of shut him down a little bit, but we didn’t shut him down all the way.
“There comes a point where you have to one-on-one tackle,” Orgeron added. “You have got to make a tackle on a guy. We didn’t.That is what we spent the whole halftime doing is adjusting our rush. We call that a cage rush where we contain him in the pocket, then put a spy on him.”
