Auburn's Georgia upset ended three remarkable college football streaks

Auburn beat No. 1 Georgia 27-24 in Athens on Saturday, Oct. 17, rallying from a 14-point deficit to end several of college football's longest-running streaks. The unranked Tigers won on Alex McPherson's field goal as time expired, delivering a result that interrupted Georgia's dominance at home and against unranked opponents.

Our earlier report covered Auburn's final-play win over Georgia. The numbers behind the comeback show how rarely a team in Auburn's position has prevailed.

How Auburn overturned Georgia's lead

The finish came after a Gunner Stockton fumble with 58 seconds left, according to CBS Sports. McPherson then made a 34-yard field goal on the final play. Auburn had entered the game as a 20.5-point underdog, making the late turnover decisive in an upset that had looked unlikely even before Georgia took its early lead.

Which streaks ended in Athens

ESPN reported that unranked teams trailing the AP No. 1 team by at least 14 points had lost 195 consecutive games. The previous comeback from such a deficit was Michigan State's 28-24 victory over No. 1 Ohio State in 1998. Top-ranked teams had also won 93 straight home games against unranked opponents before Auburn's visit; the last such home loss was LSU's defeat by Arkansas in 2007.

Georgia brought another record into the game: Under coach Kirby Smart, it was 65-0 against unranked opponents after taking a lead of at least 14 points, according to ESPN. CBS Sports said Auburn's victory was the first road win by an unranked team over a No. 1 side since 2007. Those measures describe different situations, but each puts Saturday's result in context.

What the result means for Auburn

CBS Sports reported that Auburn had not won at Georgia since 2005 or beaten the Bulldogs anywhere since 2017. The Tigers had endured five consecutive losing seasons entering 2026 and stood at 4-2 after Saturday's game. The win gives coach Alex Golesh's team a break from that recent history, though a single result cannot establish how its season will finish.

Smart called the defeat the second-largest upset of his career, CBS Sports reported. Brown's running and Auburn's late recovery turned Georgia's early advantage into a loss, while the records broken in Athens show the scale of the comeback beyond the final score.