Byrum Brown’s touchdown catch was the kind of play that stops you for a second, the sort of thing that looks like a trick until Auburn football explains it away.
On Saturday, Sept. 12, in Auburn’s 43-8 win against Southern Miss, Brown put together a big afternoon in his first home game with the program. He erased a three-interception showing from Week 1 and finished with 319 yards of total offense and three scores. The last one came on fourth-and-3, when Christian Neptune slipped him a 5-yard completion and Brown tumbled into the end zone.
It was Brown’s first reception in two seasons and the fourth catch of his career, but that kind of thing almost never happens for Auburn quarterbacks. The last time one of them caught a touchdown pass was in 2012, when Kiehl Frazier did it against Lousiana-Monroe.
Still, neither Brown nor coach Alex Golesh treated it like some wild wrinkle. Golesh called it "just kind of part of what we do," and said it was the call Auburn had ready for that exact spot, with the ball inside the 5 on fourth down.
"All they had shown was man in that situation down there," Golesh said. "Generally, when people play man, they don't have anybody covering the quarterback."
Brown saw it the same way. When asked about Golesh’s explanation, he kept it simple: "Whatever it takes to score, that's what we're going to do."
The catch capped a performance that showed off exactly why Brown is such a dangerous dual-threat quarterback. He accounted for four of Auburn’s 10 runs of double-digit yardage, and seven of his 18 completions went for at least 15 yards.
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Auburn's first home game under Alex Golesh brought plenty to like, and the 43-8 win over Southern Miss gave the Tigers a second victory of the season with room to spare. Golesh came away impressed by the way the defense set the tone and by quarterback Byrum Browns performance, while linebacker Elijah Melendez stood out as the teams leading tackler in a dominant all-around showing.
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