Auburn’s seniors celebrated their final game in Jordan-Hare Stadium with a win Saturday night, beating Texas A&M 43-41 in four overtimes.

It was a thrilling victory for Auburn, a team with many close losses this season, but could never seem to find the big win. It found that win against Texas A&M and now has a chance to clinch bowl eligibility with a win against Alabama in the final week of the regular season.

The performance itself was up and down for Auburn, but the Tigers will be happy with the result over everything else.

Here’s how we graded the Tigers’ performance against Texas A&M:

Offense

Grade: B+

This was a tough grade to give. Auburn had spurts where it looked unstoppable offensively, but it looked inept in other parts of the game.

The Tigers finished with 469 yards of total offense, a more than respectable number. The start to the game was the highlight, with Auburn quickly scoring 21 points, mainly coming on explosive pass plays.

Cam Coleman and KeAndre Lambert-Smith both went over 100 receiving yards for the second consecutive game, with most of those yards coming on chunk plays.

While much of the middle portion of the game was hot and cold for the offense, the unit deserves credit for the two-minute drive that put the game into overtime. It was arguably Auburn’s best two-minute drill of the season, a scenario the Tigers have struggled in.

There was still some inconsistency, keeping this grade from being higher, but the offense played a good game overall against a solid defense.

Defense

Grade: C+

The defense wasn’t quite as bad as the 41 points it gave up would suggest, but it did have one of its tougher games in recent weeks.

Texas A&M’s offense was methodical throughout the game, consistently putting together long drives, helped by the fact the Aggies were 10-for-19 on third down.

There were also a few noticeable mistakes in the secondary, the biggest being a slant that turned into a 73-yard touchdown after Jay Crawford missed on a pass breakup attempt and Jerrin Thompson took a bad angle to try and make a tackle.

The defense did make its fair share of plays, though, and freshmen Demarcus Riddick, Malik Blocton and Kaleb Harris all stood out. Marcel Reed’s dual threat ability created challenges for the unit, but Auburn did a decent job of containing him, sacking him four times.

It wasn’t the lights out performance we’ve seen from Auburn’s defense in recent weeks, but it wasn’t bad either.

Special Teams

Grade: C-

If not for some big kicks late in the game by Ian Vachon, this grade would be much lower.

Auburn was clean on its returns against Texas A&M, but senior punter Oscar Chapman had a pair of uncharacteristically bad punts. Those allowed Texas A&M to control field position during the middle portion of the game.

Vachon also had a pretty bad missed field goal from 40 yards out, a kick even his head coach criticized him for. He redeemed himself, though, making a 29-yard field goal to send the game to overtime and a 41-yarder in overtime.

All is well that ends well, and that’s the case for Auburn’s special teams against Texas A&M.

Coaching

Grade: B+

Similar to the offense, the coaching had both some highlights and lowlights.

The offensive gameplan to start the game was near perfect. Auburn used tempo, something that clearly threw Texas A&M’s defense off early on. The offense was also able to exploit some holes in the defense with RPOs and overall kept the unit off balance for much of the first half.

Things dried up a little bit in the middle of the game, but there weren’t any particularly egregious calls or game-changing decisions made.

In the final two possessions, there were some questionable decisions — like running the ball with less than a minute left and no timeouts — and some poor execution with pre-snap penalties. That’s not all on coaching, but it makes you question what caused so many mistakes there.

At the same time, the two-minute drive to tie the game was one of the few times this season Auburn has been successful in a two-minute drill.

When Auburn answered Texas A&M’s touchdown with its own in the first overtime, some may make an argument to go for two there, but Freeze’s decision to kick the extra point clearly paid off.

Overall

Grade: A-

While none of the individual unit grades were this high, there’s no category for finishing games. Auburn’s ability to do that — something it hasn’t done all season in close games — gives it the high mark here.

So many times this season, Auburn found itself competitive with a good team, but couldn’t stay out of its own way enough to win. Against Texas A&M it finally did, and that means something within the context of the season.

Freeze even mentioned after the game that he believes Auburn could be a one or two-loss team given the nature of many of its previous losses. That’s a useless exercise now, but Saturday was a showcase of what Auburn might have been capable of all along had it not continuously beat itself.

Peter Rauterkus covers Auburn sports for AL.com. You can follow him on X at @peter_rauterkus or email him at [email protected]m