At the end of the first quarter, Auburn quarterback Jarrett Stidham was 5-of-7 with 119 passing yards and a 49-yard touchdown pass.
Stidham looked to be playing above his standards, the same standards that resulted in 1,345 passing yards, seven touchdowns and a 71.2 completion percentage through six games this season. On the first drive of the second quarter for Auburn, Stidham connected on a 25-yard pass that helped get Auburn into field goal range and extend its lead to 20-0.
Then ‘DBU’ showed up.
After that 25-yard pass, Stidham was 3-18 for 21 yards, including a paltry 2-13 for six yards in the second half.
“‘DBU,'” said junior cornerback Donte Jackson. “We don’t care if you are completing 72 percent of your passes. It doesn’t matter to us, we don’t see all that. We don’t see statistics. We just see that when you come up in the air and play against us in Tiger Stadium, play against DBU, we are going to show you what’s up and that’s every time.”
Jackson led LSU with four pass breakups on the day, all of which came on the final two drives of the game. One of Jackson’s pass breakups came on Auburn’s first fourth down with LSU up 24-23.
Jackson trailed his man from one sideline to the other as Stidham moved out the pocket to avoid pressure before throwing downfield to his receiver, and Jackson was there to knock down the pass.
The play by Jackson gave LSU the ball inside Auburn’s 30 yard line, and it led redshirt freshman kicker Connor Culp’s second field goal of the day, giving LSU a 27-23 lead with 38 seconds to go.
“I got the DB’s together and told them they got to throw the ball, running is not going to do it for them this time,” Jackson said. “They’ve got to throw the ball so we got to make plays, it’s on us. Nobody can get caught lagging, nobody can get caught looking. Just play your man because we are going man-to-man, it’s not even a secret.”
Jackson backed up his talk on Auburn’s final drive.
After breaking up Stidham’s first two passes, Jackson showed his speed jumping a route and almost had a pick six, but dropped the pass.
Jackson said that it was an instinctual play, and he knew that Stidham was not going to throw another skinny post as he did on the first two plays that Jackson broke up.
“I knew Greedy [Williams] was playing off, over the top, and I was underneath,” Jackson said. “So when I knew No. 1 was going to do a hitch, I just jumped it a little bit. I knew [Stidham] was going to throw the ball, so I wasn’t even thinking about catching the ball, I’m just like ‘Oh, that’s what I do is catch the ball.’ I was thinking about taking it to the house to put the dagger in their heart, but it didn’t work out that way.”
Even without the interception, LSU was able to seal the victory after a sack on fourth down by junior outside linebacker Arden Key.
“We knew if we were going to win it was going to come down on us,” Jackson said. “Rashard Lawrence, Devin White, Greg Gilmore, Arden Key, myself, Donnie Alexander, Kevin [Toliver], all of us, these guys on the defense, we just preached upon ourselves knowing that we are going to win this game.”
