DJ James was the last one on the field, seated on Auburn’s bench with his hands on his face, unable to move. His eyes shined with shock, looking out across the Jordan-Hare Stadium field in the stunned aftermath of a defining upset that improbably hadn’t happened. He had been the one in coverage when Alabama quarterback Jalen Milroe delivered a miracle 31-yard pass to Isaiah Bond in the corner of the same endzone Chris Davis had ran into 10 years ago.

The clock had red 0:43 when he dropped back in coverage. The navy shakers waved in a frenzy around him, the noise in an always raucous Jordan-Hare Stadium reached its climax. One stop, Auburn wins the Iron Bowl.

In a 43 second nightmare, Auburn’s offense ready to run out in victory formation was shoved back behind the sideline, as it all fell into a Milroe miracle and Auburn lost the 88th Iron Bowl 27-24.

Headsets were thrown. Head coach Hugh Freeze turned toward the scoreboard with a bewildered look on his face, hoping to see a replay showing the play wouldn’t count. Athletic Director John Cohen paced along the sideline, his head pointed toward the ground.

That Jordan-Hare noise transformed into a gasp and a silence.

Auburn got the ball and quarterback Payton Thorne threw a game ending interception two players later. As Alabama’s players ran out, storming the field Auburn students had moments ago prepared to rush onto, Auburn’s players dropped to the ground in tears.

The elated sideline and turned into an expanse and sadness, hurt and sudden awareness of the brutal finality of what had just occurred. It hit Auburn with the type of pain that sticks when heads hit pillows for days and weeks to come.

Linebacker Jalen McLeod with tears in his eyes sat down and as teammates tried to console him, he stood up and screamed.

“God damn it,” he yelled, swinging his arms as if to punch some sort of ghost hanging over him from a heartbreaking loss.

Behind him, safety Jaylin Simpson knelt down the ground and slammed his fist into the turf. Punter Oscar Chapman watched the Alabama players celebrate, slammed his helmet into the ground and walked back to the locker room. Offensive lineman Izavion ‘Too Tall’ Miller never took his helmet off and walked his sullen look all the way back across the field into the tunnel.

Griffin Speaks knelt to one knee at the south-side 45-yard line. He came here to play for his hometown school for one year, the same helmet his father wore decades before him. In the jersey that had meant so much to him in the final home game of his college career, he put his head into a clenched fist and cried.

Quarterback Robby Ashford yelled with frustration into the white Gatorade towel wrapped around his head. Auburn managers hugged each other and bawled.

Under the Jordan-Hare Stadium lights, James sat there for 10 minutes after the game ended. He watched the crimson celebration across the field. He had certainly taken the loss upon himself, the cornerback who will forever be in the pictures which will live for an eternity in Tuscaloosa.

Defensive backs coach Zac Etheridge sat down next to him and put his arm around James. Then team captain Elijah McAllister sat on James’ other side. They didn’t say a word. They didn’t need to.

They only finally moved when an equipment manager told them to. They had to clean up the field.

James got up and began to walk back surrounded by McAllister and Etheridge. Offensive lineman Jalil Irvin and recruiting director Trovon Reed came to follow them. James couldn’t look at anything but his feet. The shock hadn’t left his face.

McLeod had begun to come to grips with the loss by the time James made it back to the tunnel. He was the first one there to greet him. He gave James a hug.

“I told DJ because DJ had a hell of a game,” McLeod told reporters of what he said to James in that moment. “And, you know, with corners, people just look at that one play. I told him, look. DJ, I’ll take you again. You throw that ball up one time. I’ll give you another chance. You had, like, what, 3 PBUs this game. So I had to take that risk again with you.”

For so many so new to Auburn, this rivalry meant so much. And in the one building Alabama head coach Nick Saban has never fully conquered, Auburn had come close one more time. But close isn’t good enough. This was the third Iron Bowl Jaylin Simpson has played in during five years in Auburn. He said he’d give up toes to win this game.

On a field where Auburn has made so many memories against that crimson helmet with a white number on the side, the players collapsed with the painful demon that had suddenly been born.

Those who came to the interview room after the game did so with soft voices still trying to comprehend the way they’d lost.

Linebacker Eugene Asante’s eyes were still red. His eyes had been coated with tears and still looked on the verge of breaking down again.

“You know, it’s a tough thing,” Asante said, holding back tears. “Football is— one minute it can be a certain way and other times it can be a different way, you know. So it’s just a tough thing to grasp and understand it. I don’t think I’ll truthfully ever understand it. I’m just grateful to the guys and the way they performed. This is not on one person or anyone. I take the burden. There’s so many things I messed up and I gotta continue to prepare and put my best foot forward. I screwed up on so much.”

Win or lose, this was senior day. It was the game Auburn gets up for like no other and the game that will be the last time so many of these players step on Pat Dye Field.

After a heartbroken scene in the locker room, team captain Kam Stutts walked back out on the field in front of an empty stadium. He came back out in Auburn’s navy track suit and cream-colored slides. Slowly, he paced his way all the way across the field to the north endzone. He stopped, looked around and walked back. As he stepped across the orange line at the back of the south endzone and toward the locker room tunnel, he looked back up the stands that had been filled with loud, excited students about an hour prior.

This was the last time for Auburn’s sixth-year offensive lineman. So, he took one more look up, took it all in with a solemn glance, and walked away one final time.

Matt Cohen covers Auburn sports for AL.com. You can follow him on X at @Matt_Cohen_ or email him at [email protected]