LSU coach Lane Kiffin reacts to a play during the first half against Auburn on Saturday at Jordan-Hare Stadium. Kiffin gambled early in the second quarter on fourth-and-2 from the LSU 31, and it paid off in an eventual touchdown.
AUBURN, Ga. — Auburn once brought Lane Kiffin here for a “recruiting trip” trying to get him to be its football coach, with then-basketball coach Bruce Pearl touring him around Jordan-Hare Stadium.
“You’ll get a win here every year that you really don’t deserve,” Pearl told Kiffin, “because magical things just happen here.”
Saturday was not one of those days to beware at Jordan-Hare.
No magic for the home Tigers, who may have used up their sorcerer’s wand worth in the prior week’s upset at then No. 1-ranked Georgia.
No magic needed for the visiting Tigers, either. Not when you can throttle your opponent until its eyes pop out like champagne corks.
“When games are dominated,” Kiffin said, “the score, yardage, almost all areas, it means a lot of people are doing things right.”
After so many things went wrong for LSU in its first two road games, lost by a combined nine frustrating points at Ole Miss and Kentucky, the Tigers exercised not just two games but two years of road demons in this one.
On this bright, blue Saturday on the plains, LSU didn’t take long to put Auburn’s lights out. For the second straight week LSU just went out and squeezed the life out of a Southeastern Conference foe — 31-0 the previous week against Mississippi State, up 31-10 at halftime in this one en route to a 38-17 decision over Auburn.
A sheet-sized sign held up by an LSU fan in the rapidly emptying Jordan-Hare stands during the closing minutes said it all:
“Kiffin says: ‘Save your toilet paper!’ ”
The local supporters had no cause to roll the live oaks at Toomer’s Corner after this one, trees that still held tattered remnants of the post-Georgia victory celebration. It was practically a 180-degree reversal of that, as No. 18 LSU (6-2, 3-2 SEC) recorded its biggest road margin of victory ever over Auburn, topping a 14-point win here in 1973.
LSU’s previous four wins at Auburn dating back to 2008 were by a combined 12 points. LSU buried a lot of bad SEC road voodoo in this one, snapping an eight-game conference road losing streak that stretched all the way back to October 2024.
“When we don’t screw games up,” Kiffin said, rather ruefully, “we’re really hard to beat.”
LSU really had only one big chance to make a mess of things. Up 10-3, Sam Leavitt rolled right and threw deep and wild and into the arms of Auburn safety Eric Winters.
But wait. After further review, the point of the ball touched the turf. Incomplete.
A do-over. The kind of second chance LSU didn’t get in its 35-34 overtime loss two weeks earlier at Kentucky. The Tigers pounced on the opportunity.
And At Auburn Kiffin, unlike At Kentucky Kiffin, was the aggressor. On fourth-and-2 from LSU’s 31, he made the fourth-down gamble he was unwilling to make on fourth-and-1 from the LSU 43 in Lexington.
Not only did LSU go for it, the Tigers did so with panache: a direct snap to Dilin Jones, who tossed to Leavitt, who threw in the right flat to Trey’Dez Green for 11 yards. Nine plays later, Leavitt threw again to Green, who 18-wheelered his way into the end zone on a 15-yard scoring play that put LSU up 17-3, capping a 14-play, 95-yard drive.
Green, who missed the last four-plus games with a knee injury, was worth his 242 pounds in gold to the LSU offense. He had five catches for 50 yards, not matching wide receiver Jackson Harris’ stellar day (nine catches, 178 yards, two scores) but adding a dimension to the offense that the Tigers definitely missed.
“As much as the play of him, it’s the feel of him,” Kiffin said. “You just feel different. Just to have him back in uniform just felt good.”
Leavitt went off after his near mistake, finishing with more than 400 yards of total offense (387 passing, 54 rushing) and four touchdowns. He got a mulligan, but that’s now two straight games without an interception for the transfer quarterback who seems to be truly grasping the Kiffin/Charlie Weis Jr. offense.
“It’s a constant progression,” said Leavitt, who did nothing to hurt his standing as the SEC’s top passer. “Today was another step forward.”
LSU now heads home for the season’s only open date before opening up the well-publicized November gauntlet: Alabama and Texas at home, another road trip to Tennessee before closing things out at Arkansas.
Maybe this is the year a 9-3 team makes the 12-team College Football Playoff, but neither LSU nor anyone else can count on that. The Tigers have to play like there is no margin for error.
Could be that loss at Kentucky will haunt the Tigers in the end, but there is nothing LSU can do about that now. But here is a history lesson that can benefit the Tigers in the big games to come: If they play as they have the past two weeks in the next four, there is no game LSU can’t win.
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