Zinter was carted off with a broken tibia and fibula, and had surgery Saturday night. Zak Zinter, an All Big 10 guard, was down and wasn’t getting up, and when a teammate felt Zinter’s foot go limp, everyone knew this was no momentary injury. Gradually, the players and the crowd of 110,615 in Michigan Stadium realized the real consequences of the play. Barner with an 18-yard pass to the Ohio State 22 yard line in the third quarter. For Auburn, that merely set up fourth-and-a-nightmare, and a Nick Six that joins the Pick Six in a statewide psychic museum. That five-yard penalty put Alabama back on the 31. With 0:43 left, Milroe was chased to the sideline and unleashed a pass when he had already passed the line of scrimmage, triggering a pirouette of rage from Saban. It took a botched shotgun snap that sailed past Milroe and accounted for an 18-yard loss. ![]() So how do you go from first-and-goal on the eight to fourth-and-goal from the 31? Thus, the Tide had a first down on Auburn’s 30, and Milroe then ran 19 yards on a third-and-20 and Roydell Williams got three yards on fourth-and-one. It also didn’t help that Freeze, when questioned, thought Scott, not Moore, was in the game. It did not help that Moore wasn’t the regular punt returner. But then Koy Moore muffed Alabama’s punt. In the fourth quarter Auburn led 24-20 and stopped the Tide twice. Both are unusual numbers against the Crimson Tide. But the elevator has lurched upward from Rock Bottom.īesides, there’s lots of encouraging tape from this one. A 6-6 season at Auburn never is, and it does little good to talk about losing by seven to Georgia or by seven to Mississippi. Only two weeks ago they were hammered, at home, by New Mexico State. It is hoped he will not turn into a Bill Buckner figure at Auburn, and it’s possible the Tigers will shove this episode to the side of the memory bank as they continue to improve. He is a transfer from Oregon, one of the Tigers’ best cornerbacks, and he had already broken up three passes during the game. James sat on the Jordan-Hare Stadium turf for at least 10 minutes after the buzzer. Hugh Freeze, the first-year Auburn coach, said that he would use the same defense and said, quite understandably, that all the defenders needed was to use their vision “and knock it down.” The problem was that Bond found a 1-on-1 matchup and Milroe, critically, had the wherewithal to find it, too. As Chris Doering of the SEC Network noted, “Jalen Milroe is not going to scramble for a 31-yard touchdown.” With no pressure, Milroe could at least throw comfortably, and once a ball goes into the end zone it can cause all sorts of damage. But it might have been a little late for that. Cornerback Terrion Arnold clarified it, however: “In practice we let the guy catch it,” and maybe that’s where the confidence came from.Īccording to Bond, the play is called “Gravedigger,” and it was facilitated by Auburn’s decision to use only two rushers and one “spy” to make sure Milroe, a devastating runner, would stay in the pocket. The Crimson Tide works on such things every Friday, he said. Alabama won, 28-24, and coach Nick Saban admitted that, yeah, luck played a part, but so did preparation. ![]() An air traffic controller couldn’t have arranged it better. James that he would be closer to the middle. There, Isaiah Bond had darted toward the sideline after convincing Auburn cornerback D.J. Given more than six seconds to hang around in the pocket and watch the buzzing swarm of white and blue clad humanity in and around the end zone, Milroe threw to the left back corner. The Nick Six was a touchdown pass from Jalen Milroe, Alabama’s next great quarterback, and strike up the Heisman band for 2024. ![]() Late Saturday we had a possible answer: Almost as many times as you win a game when it’s fourth-and-goal from the plus-31. How many times do you see a field goal run back? Auburn has only two wins over Alabama since.īut at least Auburn had that moment, that rare mental photo of something that went to that place where wildest dreams lose hope. That victory put the Tigers into what became the final Bowl Championship Series game, which turned out to be a come-from-ahead loss to Florida State. We have a decade of Alabama’s excellence, piling on top of that night in 2013 when Chris Davis picked up a failed 57-yard field goal attempt and sprinted down the sideline and into a irretrivable place inside the Auburn heart. We have Alabama swaggering its way down to Auburn, ready to pick up a pro forma win over its beleaguered rival, a stopover on the road to an SEC Championship date with Georgia. And now, ten years later, we have the Nick Six.
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