Auburn Tigers offensive coordinator Derrick Nix kept it all the way real regarding his decision to take on Baylor’s in-game dare
The Auburn Tigers offense didn’t shy away from doing what Baylor wanted them to do.
On Friday night, when the Auburn Tigers kicked their 2025-26 season off against the Baylor Bears, the world wasn’t really sure what they were going to see from Hugh Freeze’s team. Last year, they were pretty bad at really everything, but now they have the pieces on the roster to be a good football team. It was mainly the Tigers’ offense that was bad last season, with a big quarterback issue.
Now, it’s only the first game of the season, but the Tigers’ offense looked like a completely different unit than the one we saw last year. That could be because of Baylor’s defense, or that could be because of the job Freeze and his offensive coordinator, Derrick Nix, have done.
Derrick Nix reveals the thinking behind Tigers’ offense vs. Baylor
Sure, the Tigers didn’t throw it very many times, but that doesn’t mean that they can’t, or even that they won’t have games like that during the season. Auburn absolutely has the right personnel to be a passing team with Jackson Arnold at quarterback and two of the best receivers in the country in Cam Coleman and Eric Singleton.
However, if you’re good at running the ball, and the defense is daring you to do that, why wouldn’t you?
“They were playing two high safeties a lot in our 12 personnel. So we decided we were going to keep handing the ball off to our running backs and finding ways to run our QB on some counters and power reads. Obviously, Jackson used his legs well on scrambles, too,” Nix told Auburn Network after the win.
Arnold was just 11/17 through the air, finishing with 108 passing yards, with his completions going for an average of 6.4 yards. Considering they only passed the ball 17 times, that’s not a bad passing game from Arnold. He protected the ball and didn’t make mistakes. Arnold started slowly, trying to get his feet under him. Soon after, he realized what the defense was doing, and that’s when he started taking advantage of Baylor’s defense with some RPO passing when they weren’t busy running the ball.
When they were, Arnold was most responsible for that side of things, too. He rushed for 137 yards on 16 carries, with two rushing touchdowns. His yards per carry ended at 8.6 on the night, which is almost a first down every time he carried the ball. The Tigers’ offense as a whole finished with 308 rushing yards on 51 total carries and four rushing touchdowns.
This may not be the way the Tigers’ offense wins games in the future – they may do it through the air or even strictly with their defense if the offense ends up having an off day. The season is still young, so it’s very hard to try and see what this team is. But the way they won their season opener was exactly what Baylor was begging them to do.
