No. 18 LSU Beats Auburn 38-17 as Sam Leavitt, Jackson Harris Torch the Plains

Seven days earlier, Auburn was the best story in college football. Byrum Brown ran all over No. 1 Georgia, the Tigers walked out of Athens with the upset of the year, and Alex Golesh's first season on the Plains suddenly felt like something bigger.

Then LSU showed up at Jordan-Hare Stadium and took the air out of all of it in about 30 minutes.

No. 18 LSU beat Auburn 38-17 on Saturday, scoring on five of its six first-half possessions and leading 31-10 at the break. Sam Leavitt threw for a career-high 387 yards and accounted for four touchdowns, Jackson Harris caught nine passes for 178 yards and two scores, and the LSU defense finished with seven sacks. It also snapped an eight-game losing streak for LSU on the road in SEC play, which is the kind of streak nobody in Baton Rouge wanted to talk about.

Auburn falls to 4-3 and 2-3 in the SEC. LSU improves to 6-2.

Even the coin toss went purple

LSU won the opening toss, which, according to LSU's own recap, ended a four-game losing streak in that department. Lane Kiffin's team deferred, and then the defense set the tone right away when Princewill Umanmielen sacked Brown for a 6-yard loss on a three-and-out.

Scott Starzyk's 30-yard field goal put LSU up 3-0, and Auburn answered with a 12-play, 69-yard drive that ended with Alex McPherson's 23-yard field goal. For a few minutes, this looked like a game.

Then Leavitt found Harris for a 10-yard touchdown late in the first quarter, and LSU never trailed again.

The second quarter avalanche

The real damage came in the second quarter, when LSU put 21 points on the board and turned a road game into a clinic. Trey'Dez Green, back after missing four games with a sprained knee, caught a 15-yard touchdown to cap a 95-yard drive and make it 17-3.

Auburn had one punch left. Brown, who ran for 115 yards against Georgia, broke loose for a 34-yard scramble into LSU territory, and he capped the drive by keeping it himself from the 1. It was 17-10 with just under six minutes left in the half, and Jordan-Hare finally found its voice.

It lasted about a minute.

The turning point: a 12-yard route that went 70

On LSU's next possession, Leavitt hit Harris on a crossing route about 12 yards downfield. Harris caught it in stride, outran everybody in a navy jersey and finished it 70 yards later in the end zone. It was LSU's longest play from scrimmage since October 2024, and it pushed the lead back to 24-10.

Leavitt then marched LSU down the field one more time before halftime and scored on a 4-yard run with 17 seconds left. That made it 31-10, and those 31 first-half points were LSU's most against an SEC opponent since 2020. LSU had 346 yards at the half. Auburn would finish the entire game with 271.

Leavitt is starting to look like the guy

When Kiffin landed Leavitt out of the transfer portal, this was the version of him LSU was paying for. He completed 32 of 45 passes, ran for 54 yards and did not turn the ball over for the second straight week. A week earlier, he threw for 289 yards and four touchdowns in a 31-0 win over Mississippi State.

Kiffin, who has been around enough quarterbacks to know when one is clicking, pointed to the last two weeks as proof. "If you look at the last two weeks, in three quarters of play, his numbers are off the charts efficient," he said. Leavitt now has nine career games with three or more touchdown passes, three of them this season.

Harris was the other half of the show. The nine catches, 178 yards and two touchdowns were all career highs, and it was his second 100-yard game of the season. "He just works really hard," Kiffin said of Harris.

Auburn never got to be Auburn

The formula that beat Georgia was simple: let Brown run, let him extend plays, and make the defense pay for every bad angle. LSU took that away early. The Tigers blitzed and spied Brown from the start, forced him to win from the pocket and then collapsed the pocket on him.

Brown finished 15-of-24 for 160 yards and ran 19 times for just 21 yards, with the sacks eating into almost everything he gained. It was his 39th career start, the most by a quarterback in SEC history, and one of the roughest of the bunch. Auburn as a team ran 35 times for 67 yards, 1.9 yards per carry. Golesh did not dress it up.

"We didn't effectively move the ball offensively, seven of 11 drives for four plays or less," he said. "Outside of those drives, we got into some third-and-longs and that's just not the world we want to live in."

The numbers that tell the story

LSU outgained Auburn 552 to 271, and that 552 was the most Auburn's defense has allowed all season. The 271 was Auburn's lowest offensive output of the year. LSU picked up 29 first downs to Auburn's 16, went 3-for-4 on fourth down and did not turn it over.

The LSU defense was the quiet star. Jordan Ross had two sacks, Umanmielen picked up his ninth of the season, and the unit finished with seven sacks and 12 tackles for loss. Holding the quarterback who just torched Georgia to 21 rushing yards is a statement.

After Dilin Jones scored on a 12-yard run early in the fourth quarter to make it 38-10, the only thing left was garbage time. Backup quarterback Tristan Ti'a scored his first career rushing touchdown from 7 yards out with 24 seconds left, and that kept alive one bit of Auburn history: the Tigers have now scored in a school-record 173 straight games. You can find every snap in LSU's official box score (opens in a new tab).

What it means

For LSU, this was the road win the program needed. The Tigers have an open date next week, then host Alabama at Tiger Stadium on Nov. 7, a game that will tell everyone whether this offense is real. LSU's game recap (opens in a new tab) is understandably focused on the passing game, and it should be.

Auburn did not get a breather. Next on the schedule was a Halloween trip to Ole Miss, a fourth straight ranked opponent. One week earlier, Auburn's win at Georgia made it the talk of the sport. The next job was proving that Saturday was not the outlier. Auburn's own postgame recap (opens in a new tab) frames the next step as a test of how fast this team can reset.

The last word

Golesh, to his credit, did not hide from any of it. "There's no silver lining. There's no anything," he said. "That was bad in every imaginable way."

He also knows exactly what this season has been so far. "We've had the high of highs so far," Golesh said. "And that would be the low of lows."

That is the SEC in one week. Auburn went from toppling the No. 1 team in the country to getting run out of its own building. LSU went from a team with a road problem to a team with a quarterback who looks like he can carry it into November. One Saturday does not define a season, but this one sure clarified a few things.

Sources: LSU Athletics recap and box score, Auburn Athletics, The Associated Press, CBS Sports, ABC 33/40, WAKA 8, Auburn On SI and Saturday Down South. More college football coverage on Undrafted.

Photos: Austin Perryman/Auburn Tigers.