Observations: Auburn 73, Alabama A&M 3

Yes, it was against an overmatched FCS foe. But the Tigers opened the 2024 season with their best-ever performance in a paycheck game.

WR Cam Coleman and WR KeAndre Lambert-Smith (Noelle Iglesias/Auburn Tigers)

In 1932, Auburn football played its one true home game of the season at 700-seat capacity Drake Field. Auburn faced the Flying Fleet of Erskine College, a small Presbyterian liberal arts school in South Carolina that is now in Division II.

The forward pass had been around for less than 30 years.

For more than 90 years, Auburn vs. Erskine marked the last time the Tigers had beaten an opponent by at least 70 points.

That ended Saturday night in the 88,043-seat Jordan-Hare Stadium — and the forward pass was a rather significant part of the festivities.

After an offseason that was so focused on a brand-new cast of characters at wide receiver and the desperate need to improve through the air, Auburn delivered a 73-3 destruction of in-state FCS program Alabama A&M on Saturday night that marked the 800th win in program history.

Auburn has played a large number of overmatched opponents in paycheck games over the years. But the Tigers haven’t looked quite like that in those games.

The quarterbacks, led by Payton Thorne, threw for 451 yards and six touchdowns. It was the best performance by an Auburn passing attack in any game since the 2014 Iron Bowl. Ten different receivers had a catch. Five of them, all newcomers, scored.

“We were over there joking about who's going to get the next touchdown,” Penn State transfer wide receiver KeAndre Lambert-Smith, who scored twice in the first quarter, said afterwards. “I'm like, ‘You get a touchdown, you get a touchdown.’”

“You get a touchdown, you get a touchdown!” Cam Coleman, the 5-star freshman phenom who scored from 44 yards out on the first catch of his career, yelled from across the interview room in response.

The Tigers only ran the ball 18 times, but they still averaged nearly 10 yards per carry and scored three touchdowns on the ground. The defense didn’t give a touchdown, despite Alabama A&M getting right near the goal line multiple times. The special teams unit had a clean night and scored a touchdown of its own after nearly getting another one earlier in the game.

And that historic scoring output — only the third time Auburn had cracked 70 points in the modern, Jordan-Hare Stadium era — came with both sides agreeing to shave off five minutes from both the third and fourth quarters.

“Obviously, I wish they were all kind of like that,” head coach Hugh Freeze said. “They won’t be, but it is good to see a lot of kids get involved and a lot of faces. We’ve got a lot of things to clean up, but certainly pleased with a lot of aspects.”

It’s important not to overreact to a blowout win against a team that doesn’t resemble the rest of the squads Auburn will face this season. There’s usually not much you can learn from these games, even when they’re not 70-pointers.

But it’s important not to underreact, either. There’s still something to be said for looking that dominant against anyone at this level.

“It’s good to do it against somebody else,” Thorne said. “We play against our defense all fall camp, and then you play against the scout team getting ready for this game. But to actually do it in your jersey, in front of your fans, under the lights — it means something. You’ve got to take something from that.

“The team we played is a D-I football team. It’s not like we played a high school team or something.”

Here are four Observations from Auburn’s 73-3 rout of Alabama A&M, along some Nerd Stats and the Quote of the Night.

WR Perry Thompson (Zach Bland/Auburn Tigers)

The new-look WR room put on a fireworks show

Auburn didn’t plan on throwing the ball 60% of the time Saturday night. But it probably didn’t expect to run only 46 plays in total. After all, a RPO-heavy system is designed to just take what the defense gives you.

In that case, Tigers fans everywhere should be thankful that the visiting Bulldogs lined up the way they did, because it led to an explosive passing showcase with the revamped receiver room that so many had wanted to see all offseason.

“They were stuffing the box,” Coleman said. “We had to throw the ball. When we threw the ball, we made big plays.”

The best examples of that came on Auburn’s first two passing touchdowns of the game — a pair of 1-play drives in the opening five minutes.