Alabama escaped — and yes, that is the correct word — with a 27-24 victory that keeps its College Football Playoff hopes alive, if only barely. Style points matter in a race as tight as this year’s playoff sprint, and the Alabama that beat Auburn was a far cry from the team that had thundered off nine straight wins since a September loss to Texas in Tuscaloosa.
Beaten to within an inch of submission, Alabama pulled a miracle from disaster, as Jalen Milroe found Isaiah Bond in the deepest corner of Auburn’s end zone — on fourth and 31 with 43 seconds left — to reverse a game that had been going Auburn’s way almost all night. These are the kind of miracles that can only happen in the Iron Bowl.
Ghosts were in the air at Jordan-Hare Stadium on Saturday. This season marks the 10-year anniversary of Auburn’s landmark 2013 season, where the Tigers beat Georgia on a tipped Hail Mary — the Prayer at Jordan-Hare — and then knocked off Alabama two weeks later. That game — the Kick Six, where Auburn’s Chris Davis ran back a missed Alabama field goal attempt with no time on the clock — still stands as one of the greatest college football plays of all time. Auburn displayed the actual Kick Six ball, safely behind plastic, just outside the stadium for hours prior to the game, and Davis and other members of the team soaked up the crowd’s love during a second-quarter introduction.