Remembering the 2013 Auburn Tigers: A team that will ‘live on forever’

AUBURN, Ala. – Ten years ago to the day, Auburn rushed for 545 yards and scored 59 points to beat Missouri and win the SEC Championship. It was the program’s eighth conference title since joining the SEC in 1933. It was also the culmination of what was one of the most historic seasons on the Plains.

No Auburn fan or college football fan in general will forget the 2013 Auburn team.

For most people, that season will be remembered for two of the most iconic plays in college football history – the Prayer at Jordan Hare and the Kick Six.

“It was two crazy weeks,” former Auburn offensive lineman Chad Slade said. “We didn’t expect it. We just tried to come out here and play a game, and both of those ended up happening. We loved every bit of it.”

But if you ask Slade or any other member of that 2013 team, that team shouldn’t just be remembered for those two miracle plays against their two biggest rivals. They should be remembered for the way they overcame adversity and for how they found a way to win every single week.

“Just resiliency,” said Reese Dismukes, a team captain in 2013. “Coming back from going 3-9 the previous year and the ability for us to really compartmentalize that, put it behind us, come in with a new team, work hard and fight to win each and every game and get better. The commitment between the guys that it took and the effort. It was not easy, but we were able to do it.”

As memorable as the 2013 season was for Auburn fans, the 2012 season was just the opposite. The Tigers finished 3-9 and failed to win an SEC game. The low point came at home against Texas A&M when they trailed 42-7 at the half. But if not for that 2012 season, the 2013 season might not have happened.

“I think the biggest thing that stands out (from 2013) is how hungry we were to win and how tired of losing we were from the season before,” linebacker Kris Frost said.

“Other than that, it was the fact that we really had great players. A lot of us were misplaced. We were kind of in different positions. A lot of us were playing multiple positions. We had a lot of injuries that (2012) year. But overall, we had really standout players. We had guys that could compete with anybody, and at that time in the SEC, those were some of the best players in the country.”

The other major factor was a change at the top. On Dec. 4, 2012, Gus Malzahn was hired as the 27th head coach in Auburn football history.  Immediately, he went to work on changing the culture.

“Everybody bought into what Gus was preaching,” defensive back and fellow captain Chris Davis said. “The big thing then was the Gus Bus, and we had the majority – more than 95 percent of people – bought in. I think that’s where the success came from.”

“It was engrained in us by Coach Malzahn that we would always find a way to win,” added wide receiver Ricardo Louis. “Obviously, we had a bad season before. We had that mentality where we’re just tired of losing. We want to win. Malzahn came in, he had the same energy. He energized us every time we went out on the field.”

Per Davis, there was no goal set before the season. Obviously, every team wans to win a championship. But the goal that year was to go game-by-game, week-by-week, and that’s what Auburn did.

With a new quarterback in Nick Marshall who didn’t even have the full playbook at his disposal to begin the season, the Tigers picked up wins over Washington State and Arkansas State in their first two games. The following week, in just the third game, it took some late-game heroics from Marshall to beat Mississippi State as he connected with C.J. Uzomah on the game-winning touchdown with just 10 seconds remaining.

In some years, that might have been Auburn’s most memorable win. Not in 2013. 

In just about every championship season, there’s a moment or a game you can point to where the team starts to realize something special is happening. For Auburn, the players are split between two moments – the loss at LSU in September and the win at Texas A&M the following month.

The loss at LSU came the week after Mississippi State. It was certainly a setback for a team that was riding high coming in, but it wasn’t about the outcome as much as it was about the response. After falling behind 21-0 in the first half on the road, Auburn could have given up. It’s what would have likely happened the year before. This team, however, wasn’t about to give up. 

The Tigers didn’t win the game, but they outscored LSU 21-14 in the second half.

“In that locker room at halftime, nothing was said,” Slade recalled. “Tre Mason got up and said a couple words, but besides that, nothing else was said. We went back out there and turned it around. I think that was the turning point in our season that we knew, ‘Hey, we’ve got a team right here boys. We can go out here and do this thing.’”

“How we took the LSU game is something that sits on us the most,” added Frost. “That loss, the way we got beat in the first half and were able to come back in the second half and completely wash it – it kind of set the tone for what we could do.”

The other moment came a month later when Auburn, ranked No. 24 at the time, traveled to Texas A&M and knocked off Johnny Manziel and the 7th-ranked Aggies. Marshall accounted for 336 total yards and four total touchdowns, Tre Mason scored the go-ahead touchdown with 1:19 left, and Dee Ford secured the 45-41 victory by sacking Manziel on fourth down in the closing seconds. 

“For me, if I had to pick a game where we really knew we could make something happen was when we beat Texas A&M,” Louis said. “It was one of the biggest games because it showed the whole world what we were made of as a team. We overcame adversity. We had a guy Johnny Manziel, who was a star. ‘You can’t beat him. He’s so good.’ We ended up taking him out. I think that’s really what put us on the map as a team.”

The wins continued to mount for Auburn in the month of November as the Tigers won on the road at Arkansas and Tennessee in back-to-back weeks. They had ripped off six straight wins since the LSU loss and climbed to No. 7 nationally with two games left – Georgia and Alabama. It’s the two games that always define the season for Auburn, and the 2013 season was no different.

“They used to always say, ‘They remember November,’” Dismukes said. “You trained all offseason. You embraced that. That was kind of part of why you come here. To play the best ball against the best teams. You don’t get those opportunities at other places.”

Nobody anticipated what would happen next, though.

First, it was Georgia and the Prayer at Jordan-Hare. With less than a minute remaining, Auburn faced 4th-and-18 from its own 27-yard line. If the Tigers didn’t convert, the game was over. Marshall took the snap, scanned the field, stepped up and threw a heave in the direction of Louis who was streaking down the field.

It would have been a perfect ball if not for the two Georgia defenders there waiting to intercept it. But the two defenders collided causing the ball to bounce back up into the air, and Louis was right there ready to grab the deflection as he raced into the end zone for the game-winning score.

“It’s something where when I’m 50, 60, 70 years old, I’ll still be remembered for that,” Louis said. “Every time it comes around the time of year when we’re playing Georgia or Alabama, it starts to come up again. During the year, I’m so focused on what I’m doing and my life. Then it gets closer to that time of year, and it just pops up in my head. I start seeing it everywhere.

“It’s going to be hard to forget. And when I have kids, my kids are going to want to know what I did as a player back in the day. I can just put that tape on.”

Two weeks later, it was Alabama and the Kick Six. The hero this time was Davis who fielded Alabama’s 57-yard field goal attempt in the back on the end zone ran it back 109 yards with no time on the clock for the game-winning touchdown. The fans rushed the field just as play-by-play announcer Rod Bramblett predicted in his call. “They're not going to keep them off the field tonight.”  

“That play will be played in this stadium forever,” Davis said. “That’s why a lot of athletes play the game – to be remembered. I just so happen to make that play at that time in that moment.

“The crazy thing? I think everybody will be able to tell you what they were doing that day. Everybody. And I’ve heard everything. I’m just proud of it. That was a proud moment, and that’s something that will live on forever.”

The storybook season continued after the dramatic wins over Georgia and Alabama as Auburn beat Missouri in the SEC title game and earned a spot in the BCS championship game for the second time in four years. Unlike in 2010, though, the Tigers didn’t get to hoist the trophy in the final game.

Still, it’s a season that will be just as memorable for fans who got to experience the Prayer at Jordan-Hare and the Kick Six and all the emotions that came with it.

For the players, it will always be special because of what happened the year before and how they changed the culture from one season to the next. It will be special because of the brotherhood formed that season. And it will be special because of how the Auburn fans rallied around them through good times and bad.  

“It’s been 10 years,” Louis said. “It’s been a whole decade. Every year since then, there’s always something new that pops up in my head of what I realize about that season. For some reason now what’s coming to me is just how the fans were that whole season.

“That (Georgia) game and the Kick Six were great, but just the entire season – how the fans were always supportive and how they still remember the games now and how they still support us to this day. That really helped us as a team be more confident going into the games knowing that we had a whole state behind us. That really pushed us. That really pushed us to be a great team.”

Last month at the Iron Bowl, Auburn celebrated the 2013 team with it being the 10-year anniversary of that season. Many of the players returned to the Plains, including Davis, Louis, Dismukes, Slade and Frost. It was a time to reflect and remember the moments that made that season special. But it was also a time to look toward the future.

The 2013 season wasn’t the pinnacle for Auburn football. It was a stepping stone.

“I don’t want it to go unrecognized,” Frost said. “Not for the sake of notoriety but for the sake of we want the university to grow. We want to win. We want to find a way to change for the better and improve. We want to learn from that season and from the seasons after that –  as well as the season that came before that because the season that came before that is what produced the next one.

“At the end of the day, we don’t want to be a miracle team. We want to be consistent. We want to find a level of consistency, and I think that’s why we all came back.”