It’s hard to imagine any team — in any sport, really — that had a wilder decade than Auburn football.
The Tigers had a championship-winning season marked equally by on- and off-field dramatics. The top assistant coach from the title team was hired to replace his former boss just two years after winning that title. That coach immediately pulled off one of the biggest single-season turnarounds of all-time, one that almost ended in another national title.
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All of that was just in the first four years of the 2010s.
Since then, Auburn has continued its rollercoaster path of exceeding expectations as underdogs and frustratingly falling short as projected contenders. Auburn has also made a dramatic turn under Gus Malzahn in which a team that constantly had its defense lagging behind its offense flipped the switch over the last few seasons.
Throughout the decade, the Tigers have produced award-winners, fan favorites and folk heroes all while showing a flair for the dramatic — sometimes good, sometimes bad —in big games.
Here’s a look back at the Best of the 2010s, also known as the quintessential decade of the unpredictable ride that is Auburn Tigers football.
All-Decade Team
Offense
QB: Cam Newton
Newton is seventh all-time at Auburn in career touchdowns and 10th in career offensive yardage. He only played one season.
RB: Tre Mason
In only three years, Mason became the No. 6 all-time rusher at Auburn and set single-season records in both yardage and touchdowns as the 2013 SEC Offensive Player of the Year.
WRs: Sammie Coates, Darvin Adams and Ryan Davis
Coates is in the top 10 all-time at Auburn in both receiving yardage and touchdowns and was the perfect fit for Nick Marshall’s powerful arm in Malzahn’s run, play-action scheme. Adams only played one season at Auburn in the 2010s, but he was Newton’s favorite target in the national championship campaign. And while Davis didn’t get a ton of yardage per catch, he became Auburn’s all-time leader in receptions in just two real seasons of work.
HB/TE: Jay Prosch and Philip Lutzenkirchen
Prosch transferred to Auburn as a former All-Big Ten fullback and was the perfect sledgehammer in front of the 2013 rushing attack. Lutzenkirchen was a fan favorite even before he caught the winning touchdown in the 2010 Iron Bowl and he’s in the top 10 all-time in career touchdown receptions.
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OL (from left to right): Lee Ziemba, Alex Kozan, Reese Dismukes, Braden Smith and Greg Robinson
That group combined for seven first-team All-SEC seasons, a Rimington Award, two consensus All-American honors, two Jacobs Blocking Trophies and several record-breaking offensive seasons.
Defense
DE: Dee Ford and Marlon Davidson
Ford had double-digit sacks as a senior and was a first-round NFL Draft pick in 2014. Davidson could be well on his way to that, thanks to what is a dominant final season in which he has passed several other top-tier Auburn edge rushers of the decade in several statistical categories.
DT: Nick Fairley and Derrick Brown
Fairley might be the most singularly destructive force to ever play for Auburn. Brown might be the most talented player to ever play for Auburn’s defense.
LB: Deshaun Davis, Darrell Williams and Daren Bates
After Bates led Auburn in tackles in back-to-back seasons — including the national championship campaign — following a move to linebacker, the Tigers went through lean years at the position. That changed when Davis and Williams put together three consistently strong seasons under Kevin Steele that helped revolutionize Auburn’s defense.
CB/NB: Carlton Davis, Jonathan Jones and Rudy Ford
Davis was an All-American who starred for three seasons on the Plains en route to becoming a second-round pick in 2018. Jones had to take a longer route to fame at the next level, but he was a four-year starter who had multiple All-SEC honors to his name. Ford was an ultra-versatile tackle machine at Auburn who started his career as a running back.
FS and SS: Jeremiah Dinson and Daniel Thomas
Could their selections be a case of recency bias? Maybe, but Auburn’s safety play hasn’t looked quite as good as it has over the last two seasons with Dinson and Thomas — two veterans who have made impact plays their entire careers — manning those spots.
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Special Teams
K: Daniel Carlson
A three-time Lou Groza Award finalist, Legatron rewrote the Auburn kicking record book in his four seasons on the Plains and is the easiest call on the team.
P: Steven Clark
Clark was an underrated weapon on Auburn’s 2013 SEC Championship team with his ability to both boom long punts and pin opponents deep inside their own territory.
KR: Onterrio McCalebb and Tre Mason
Only two Auburn players who had more than one year in the 2010s are in the top 10 all-time in kickoff return yardage, and both McCalebb and Mason had multiple touchdowns on kickoffs in their careers.
PR: Chris Davis
He might not have had the best career stats of a punt returner in this decade, but there’s no way Davis gets left off the team after the now-legendary All-American season he had in 2013.
Most memorable moments
Auburn’s comeback in the 2010 Iron Bowl: Auburn made a habit out of overcoming adversity in 2010 but it hadn’t faced anything quite like a 24-0 road deficit against the defending national champion. Newton wasn’t at his Heisman-winning best, which meant the Tigers had to grind it out with improved defense and timely big plays. In arguably the toughest possible situation, Auburn scored 28 of the game’s final 31 points and kept its shot at winning a national championship alive.
Chizik’s firing: Less than two years after winning a national championship, coach Gene Chizik was fired. While that might seem harsh to an outsider, the Tigers were an absolute mess in 2012, losing every single SEC game and getting outscored 87-0 against its two biggest rivals. It was the worst season in the program’s modern history and desperate times called for desperate measures. The talent was there, too, as many of the same players in 2012 were the foundation for a 2013 run to the national title game.
“The Miracle at Jordan-Hare” and “The Kick Six”: In back-to-back games, Auburn had two of the most improbable endings in college football history. After blowing a lead late against Georgia, Auburn was forced to watch Marshall throw a last-ditch fourth-down pass into double coverage. It miraculously deflected right into the path of Ricardo Louis for the winning touchdown. Two weeks later against Alabama, Auburn called a timeout to send Davis back for a possible return on a long field goal — something that rarely happens. It did and Davis became a legend in 109 yards.
Steele’s hiring: After rough defense cost Auburn what could have been a big 2014 season and Will Muschamp left for a head coaching job after a mediocre 2015 season, Kevin Steele arrived in 2016. Muschamp was a hire that most of the fan base wanted a year earlier. Steele was not after his largely unsuccessful tenures at Clemson and LSU. But over the last four seasons, Auburn has put together one of the most dominant defenses in the country under Steele, completely flipping the script on the Malzahn era.
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Gus Malzahn’s contract extension: Auburn punched its ticket to the 2017 SEC Championship Game on the heels of double-digit wins against No. 1-ranked rivals Georgia and Alabama. An injury to Kerryon Johnson played a major part in the Tigers being unable to go to the playoff in that rematch against Georgia, but an athletic director-less Auburn administration felt compelled to sign Malzahn to a coach-friendly seven-year, $49 million extension after the loss. One disappointing season later, and there were already calls for Auburn to move past Malzahn. The decision by Steven Leath, who is no longer the school’s president, is one that will color the reaction to virtually every moment for the program in the near future.
Top games
2011 BCS National Championship Game (Jan. 10. 2011)
Two offenses that put up video-game numbers in the regular season were stifled by impressive performances from the unsung defensive heroes in the title game. A safety and a late first-half touchdown flipped the nervy game in Auburn’s direction, but Oregon tied things up late. Then Michael Dyer wasn’t ruled down on an oh-so-close call that set up Wes Byrum’s kick to finish a storybook season for Chizik, Newton, Fairley and the Tigers.
2013 SEC Championship Game (Dec. 7, 2013)
Two offenses that put up video game numbers in the regular season still put up video game numbers in the title game. Auburn led Missouri by a single point at the half, and then it scored four of the football game-turned-track meet’s final six touchdowns to pull off a 59-42 victory. Tre Mason became a Heisman Trophy finalist with a spectacular 300-yard rushing performance and a Michigan State upset against Ohio State put the Tigers into the national championship after what was a wild night in Atlanta.
2017 Deep South’s Oldest Rivalry and Iron Bowl (Nov. 11 & 25, 2017)
Undefeated Georgia rolled into Jordan-Hare Stadium looking to pick up its fourth straight win against Auburn. After falling behind early, Auburn put up 30 unanswered points on the Bulldogs, who suddenly couldn’t move the ball against the Tigers. They followed up the stunning 40-17 victory over Georgia with another heroic defensive effort against Alabama. After the Crimson Tide went up 14-10 early in the third quarter, there was a creeping dread inside Jordan-Hare Stadium that things were about to follow the usual script for Alabama. But the Tigers’ offense kept the Tide off-balance with a heavy diet of quick throws from Jarrett Stidham and runs, and it put up 16 unanswered points to pull off another win over a top-ranked rival.
Player of the decade
CB/KR Chris Davis
It would make a lot of sense to choose Newton, a Heisman-winning quarterback who quickly turned Auburn into national championship material. If someone wanted to pick a player who had more than one season of experience for the Tigers, arguments could be made for Fairley, Marshall, Mason, Johnson or Brown.
But Davis is the defining player for Auburn in the decade, and it goes beyond the fact he became an instant college football icon with the Kick Six.
Davis contributed early as a freshman on Auburn’s 2010 national title team. He went down with an injury on the opening kickoff of the win against Oregon. He got more opportunities in the uneasy season of sudden change in 2011, and he was a veteran by the time the Tigers finished their disastrous 2012 campaign.
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He saw the highest highs and lowest lows in just three years at Auburn. And, when a new coaching staff gave him a bigger role in 2013, he delivered as both a now-famous special teams star and a starting cornerback.
Auburn football has never really been a story of consistent, title-winning excellence. Championship glory and dark days both dot the timeline of the program, and the 2010s were a microcosm of that.
The sights and sounds of Davis returning a missed field goal 109 yards to beat the most dominant force of the decade will be forever linked to what people everywhere remember when they think of the Tigers. And he wouldn’t have been in that position without the adversity he went through in the years leading up to that moment.
(Top photo of Davis: Kevin C. Cox / Getty Images)
