If Auburn plans to contend for the College Football Playoff this season, it has some things to clean up.
Behind two Jeremy Johnson touchdown passes and a solid effort from Will Muschamp’s defense, Auburn jumped out to a big lead over Louisville and withstood a second-half comeback to beat the Cardinals, 31-24.
The Tigers defense, in Muschamp’s first game as defensive coordinator, started off strong by intercepting Louisville’s Lamar Jackson on the game’s first play. Five plays later, Johnson was in the end zone on a 1-yard touchdown run.
That was a good start for Johnson in his first-game as full-time starter, but the talented junior showed his inexperience with two first half interceptions. The defense was there to pick him up, though.
Louisville drove into the red zone, but Justin Garrett returned a fumble 82 yards for an Auburn touchdown to completely change the momentum of the first half.
After closing the first half out with a field goal, Johnson started off the second half with a 33-yard touchdown strike to Ricardo Louis. At 24-0, the game was looking like a blowout.
The Cardinals managed to get some points on the board (thanks in part to Johnson’s third INT) but another Louis touchdown, this time on the ground, expanded Auburn’s lead to 31-10 with 10:04 to go.
Still, Louisville would not go away.
The dual-threat Jackson was able to bring the Cardinals down the field and Brandon Radcliff finished off back-to-back drives with short touchdown runs. All of a sudden, it was 31-24 with 2:59 to go.
Cardinals coach Bobby Petrino then opted for an onside kick, but it failed, giving Auburn a chance to run the clock out with a first down conversion. Auburn looked like it did just that, but the first down was brought back because of a holding call. At that point, Petrino decided to use his final timeout with – a decision that seemed perplexing at the time.
The Tigers were unable to convert the subsequent third and long, but with Louisville now out of timeouts, the clock ran down to just three seconds. Instead of punting it back to Louisville on fourth down, Gus Malzahn ran a Hail Mary to run the clock out and seal the win.
After the game, Petrino explained that the clock would have started after the holding penalty, so he had no choice but to use his final timeout.
“When they got the penalty, they were going to mark it off, start the clock and wind it down. So we had to call timeout there to see if we could get at least one last play,” Petrino said after the game. “Once they got the penalty then I talked to the official and he said, ‘Yeah we’re winding the clock.’ So we had no choice but to call timeout.”
It was a weird ending to a game that was essentially dominated by Auburn for three quarters. Though Johnson (11-of-21, 140 yards) showed some jitters, Peyton Barber was a big pick-me-up with 113 yards on the ground.
The defense, with a noticeably improved pass-rush, was solid for the most part. The Cardinals have explosive athletes all over the field (though WR James Quick went down with what looked like a serious leg injury) and were able to put up chunks of yards in the second half as it pursued its comeback.
Auburn has a cupcake opponent to work out some of those issues next Saturday in Jacksonville State. After that there won’t be much room for mistakes with SEC contests at LSU and at home versus Mississippi State on the horizon.
For more Auburn news, visit AuburnSports.com.
For more Louisville news, visit CardinalSports.com.
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Sam Cooper is a contributor for the Yahoo Sports blogs. Have a tip? Email him or follow him on Twitter!