NASHVILLE | It wasn’t a perfect outing by any measure and he didn’t get a lot of help from his receivers.

But Payton Thorne’s most important accomplishment Saturday night was leading Auburn to its second consecutive SEC win, 31-15 at Vanderbilt.

“Truthfully, I really believe without the penalties and the drops the game is out of hand. Sometimes you have those, but I felt like there were at least two touchdowns on dropped balls and other simple ones that get us on schedule where we can operate in the manner we want to operate in,” said AU coach Hugh Freeze.

“Payton can’t give up that score. We’ve got to trust him early in the game to not make that decision. We’ve got to learn from that. I’m thrilled to win a second consecutive SEC game, particularly on the road and get us one step closer to being bowl eligible.”

Thorne completed 17 of 27 passes for 194 yards with two touchdowns and an interception that was returned five yards for a touchdown. Thorne’s touchdowns both came in the third quarter — 53 yards to tight end Rivaldo Fairweather and five yards to running back Jeremiah Cobb.

Thorne said he didn’t see Vandy outside linebacker Bryce Cowan on the pick-6.

“I saw Rivaldo out there and I thought he was wide open,” said Thorne. “I kinda, not lobbed it to him, but I didn’t rifle it in there because I thought he was wide open … The dude came out of nowhere and it caught me off guard. I think it was a d-end that dropped but I don’t know for 100 percent. That’s what I was told on the sideline. That was a tough one.”

A Vanderbilt defender also dropped another potential interception in the end zone, which AU was able to convert into a 32-yard field goal on the next play to go into halftime up 17-7.

Auburn’s receivers also dropped at least five passes and Camden Brown made a poor adjustment on a deep pass that could have been another explosive passing play.

“We've gotta get better with those,” said Fairweather. “Sometimes it's just us trying to make the extra play. I had one, when I was catching it, I was looking up the field and trying to make the extra play. We've just gotta lock in and just catch the ball first.”

But the Tigers left FirstBank Stadium win an important SEC road win to improve to 5-4 overall and 2-4 in the league. After losing 14 of their previous 16 conference games, Auburn has bounced back to win two consecutive going into next Saturday’s game at Arkansas.

After 11 different players caught a pass in last week’s 27-13 win over Mississippi State, Thorne connected with nine different ones against the Commodores.

“I feel like we touched a lot of different areas of the passing game today,” said Thorne. “Got a couple RPOs in there, got a couple movement throws, just with spacing stuff, and then I took a couple shots. We still left some out there. So that's a little bit frustrating, but it's good to be a little bit frustrated after a win.”

Kickoff at Razorback Stadium is scheduled for 3 p.m. CT on SEC Network.