The Auburn Football All-Quarter Century Team: Defense

After naming our picks for the best Auburn offensive players from 2000 to 2024, let's do the same on the defensive side of the ball.

(Auburn Tigers)

AUBURN — After celebrating the best Auburn football players from 2000 to 2024 during Tuesday’s newsletter, let’s do it again on this Wednesday with the defense.

Auburn’s defense might have had more time in the sun over this quarter century than the offense. The Tommy Tuberville days were always marked by dominant defense, and even some of the tougher seasons in recent years have featured better-than-expected play on that side of the ball.

While Auburn can call itself a contender to the Running Back U throne, it can also look at itself as one of the best producers of cornerback talent in recent memory — and it’s had two of the top SEC players of the last decade-plus play the same position on the interior of the defensive line.

In case you missed it yesterday, we’re going through the ultimate game of Remember Some Guys and picking the All-Quarter Century Team for Auburn football. With a nod to the similar teams recently produced by the NHL and several MLB writers at The Athletic, this is a Peak Offseason showcase of the best Auburn has had to offer over the last 25 years.

The Auburn Football All-Quarter Century Team: Offense

Like with the offense, we squeezed in one more player than the usual 11 on both sides of the ball — so we have two running backs and three wide receivers on offense, plus a full 4-3 front plus a nickel back on defense — along with a specialist for both sides.

Again, some of these picks were extremely tough. Some were surprisingly easy. In the end, we decided to let a player’s individual accolades and statistics carry most of the weight, with team success playing a role in any necessary tiebreakers.

Feel free to share your own Quarter Century picks on offense in the comments below, or shoot your thoughts to me in an email at the1andonlyJF@gmail.com. (If you want to tie these into a mailbag question for Thursday, even better.)

We’ll start with an incredibly simple one-two punch up front.

(Auburn Tigers)

Defensive Tackles

Nick Fairley

When people claim that Auburn’s 2010 national championship season was a one-man show, they overlook a lot of contributions from veterans elsewhere. They also overlook one of the most dominant seasons by any defensive player in SEC history.

Fairley needed to take the long route to Auburn, originally committing out of high school but having to spend some time in junior college first. He showed that he could be a good piece on the defensive line rotation in 2009 under the Tigers’ new staff, and then he took off a season later.

Fairley had two dozen tackles for loss in 2010, with 11.5 of them being sacks. That would mark a single-season school record that still stands today. Fairley was an absolute menace in the middle of the defensive line, showcasing a rare blend of quickness and power for a defensive tackle. No one had an answer for him.

In addition to an SEC championship and a national championship, Fairley was the second player in program history to win the Lombardi Award. He was named the best defensive player in the entire conference for that 2010 campaign, which he parlayed into an early pick at the 2011 NFL Draft. Folks might remember Auburn’s title run more for Cam Newton and the offense, but Fairley supercharged the other side of the ball.

Derrick Brown

It’s remarkable that after Ed King in 1990, Auburn went nearly 30 years without a unanimous All-American. (Yes, neither of those 2010 superstars made the cut. Somehow.) That changed in 2019, when Brown put the finishing touches on a remarkable Auburn career by looking like the best defensive lineman in the country.

Brown was projected to be a household name early in his career, as he was a top-10 overall recruit and consensus 5-star by all the major recruiting services. After getting into the rotation as a freshman in 2016, he was a great starter as a sophomore in 2017. In 2018, he was an All-SEC selection with double-digit tackles for loss to his name.

While he could have easily jumped to the NFL after that 2018 campaign, Brown decided to come back for one more season alongside his good friend and roommate Marlon Davidson. Even though he was double- and even triple-teamed throughout his senior season, Brown went on a rampage that earned him SEC Defensive Player of the Year honors and widespread national acclaim.

You could make the argument that Brown is the most talented defender to ever play at Auburn. Who else would be able to run off the sidelines and drill a running back in the open field at well over 300 pounds? Brown later became the No. 7 overall pick in the NFL Draft, and he was a Pro Bowler who set a league record for tackles by a defensive tackle in his last fully healthy season. He was one of a kind.