How we grade Auburn football against Southern Miss: Report card

AUBURN — After narrowly surviving its season opener with a win, Auburn football left no doubt in its next contest, beating Southern Miss 43-8 on Saturday, Sept. 12, in its home opener at Jordan-Hare Stadium.

Coach Alex Golesh’s squad scored on the first play of the contest and ran up the score with relative ease, handling its Group of 5 foe to remain undefeated at 2-0. USM fell to 1-1.

Here’s our report card for Auburn‘s performance, including grades for all three units, coaching and our game MVP.

Did Auburn do more than enough to impose its offense on a Group of 5 foe? But it still had one turnover, and 7 of its 10 penalties went against that side of the ball. It wasn’t stellar on third downs either, but going 4 for 5 on fourth downs was a high point.

Hard to find much to complain about here. Multiple turnovers, backfield stops and an opponent held to pedestrian rates all around.

Alex McPherson’s career-long field goal before the half was the high point, but Auburn was able to find some success in the return game, and punter Hudson Kaak only had to use his leg twice.

Perhaps the whistles are a group effort, but 10 penalties in any game is far from ideal. However, Auburn’s offense got out of its shell. Golesh put more of his playbook on display, and Auburn executed.

There were a slew of stellar individual performance against Southern Miss, but Jordan’s two-interception day was notable. He set the tone, and he doubled his career picks after 31 games.

It wasn’t perfect, but few performances are. Auburn made some strides after a shaky season opener, and it’s an A all in all.

Adam Cole is the Auburn athletics beat writer for the Montgomery Advertiser. He can be reached via email at acole@gannett.com or on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, @colereporter. To support Adam’s work, please subscribe to the Montgomery Advertiser.

This article originally appeared on Montgomery Advertiser: How we grade Auburn football against Southern Miss: Report card