Observations: Auburn 38, Baylor 24
The new-look Tigers stuck to an old-school formula Friday night. The result was a statement win with plenty of room for improvement.
WACO, Texas — Damari Alston said it best.
As the senior running back walked out of the postgame interview room late Friday night at Baylor, he stopped at the door and turned toward his center, Connor Lew.
“Three things that’s true! You better tell them!” Alston said to Lew, putting three fingers up in the air. “Three things! Death, taxes, and Auburn is gonna run the ball.”
Even with one of the most pass-happy head coaches the SEC has seen this side of the late Mike Leach…
Even with so much money invested in giving Auburn the most talented wide receiver room in program history…
Even with the opponent daring you to get into typical Big 12 shootout mode with its worryingly successful passing attack…
Auburn is gonna run the ball.
This is a program built on the shoulders of legendary running backs. Hey, even most of the Tigers’ best quarterbacks in program history were dangerous rushing threats.
Jackson Arnold decided to follow in those footsteps Friday night at Baylor. In his first start at Auburn, the former 5-star quarterback who won a National Player of the Year award after throwing for more than 7,000 yards in his last two seasons of high school, Arnold won the game with his legs.
With Auburn up by seven with less than five minutes to go and facing a fourth-and-1, Arnold got a chance to convert with his legs. He sliced right through Baylor’s defense for a 27-yard rushing touchdown, his second score of the night.
Arnold finished with 137 rushing yards, becoming the first Auburn quarterback since Nick Marshall in the 2013 bludgeoning of Tennessee to hit that mark in a game. It took him just one game to look like a true Tiger.
“I didn’t think I was gonna run that much,” Arnold said after Auburn’s 38-24 road win. “But, at the same time, I'm going to do what I have to do to help this team win. Took what they gave us, swallowed the pride on the pass game.”
“Which is hard for both of us,” head coach Hugh Freeze interjected. “It is. With the receivers we have, it’s very difficult.”
Last season, Auburn lost a big game or two by not running the ball when it needed to do so. To open a make-or-break 2025 season, Freeze and his team won in an un-Freeze fashion, rolling up 307 rushing yards to just 108 passing yards.
But Auburn didn’t need Arnold to try to go shot for shot with Baylor quarterback Sawyer Robertson, who lit up a surprisingly struggling Auburn pass defense for 419 yards. The Tigers didn’t need him to be a superhero.
On Friday night, they just needed him to be an Auburn Tiger. Take care of the ball, take what the defense gives you, and take advantage of the better talent around you.
“They were kind of being stubborn, playing two high safeties, giving us a favorable box,” Arnold said of Baylor’s defense. “We're gonna go and take what's ours — and go and run the ball.”
There is plenty to dissect and, more importantly, improve from Auburn’s victory. The Tigers didn’t play close to their best ball and made their fair share of mistakes.
But they’re going to get to do that over the next couple of paycheck home games on the heels of the first quality road win in years. It’s just one game, yet it could be the first step toward the Tigers getting back to where they should be year in and year out.
And it was vintage Auburn.
“We already knew what we were going to do,” Alston said. “We knew they were going to try to take away our receivers and our passing game. … We took that as a challenge. We’ve been doing it since January and in the spring. We just took it out here.
“All our hard work is starting to pay off. We’re just getting started.”
Here are five Observations from Auburn’s 38-24 road win at Baylor, along with Nerd Stats and the Quote of the Night.
