AUBURN | Three knee surgeries. Four years of mostly being a backup. It’s been a long road for Austin Troxell.

But Auburn’s fifth-year senior earned the starting left tackle position in the offseason and started a season-opener for the first time in Saturday night’s 60-10 shellacking of Akron.

“It was big. I've been working for this for a long time. It's finally my time has arrived,” Troxell said. “It's just a blessing to be out there with my teammates and my brothers. You can't beat that feeling, and you know, it was a good night tonight."

According to PFF, Troxell had a 83.4 pass blocking grade against the Zips, the best among Auburn’s offensive linemen. He didn’t allow a quarterback hurry or hit on 47 snaps.

All five of AU’s starters had a pass block grade of 77.8 or higher. The run block grades ranged from Troxell’s 52.9 to Brodarious Hamm’s team-best 77.6. Overall, the Tigers had a 82.6 pass block and 80.6 run block grade.

"I thought we executed well,” Troxell said. “The coaches had a good game plan going into this one. We had a good couple weeks of practice going into this one, and I thought we played pretty physical up front as well. Just got to kind of build on this game into the next week."

Auburn coach Bryan Harsin could tell the offensive line was locked in during Friday and Saturday’s walkthroughs.

“You could just feel those guys wanting to go out there and have a really good performance. It was important to them to play well today and I thought they did that,” said Harsin.

The offensive line led the way as Bo Nix set an Auburn record for completion percentage with a minimum of 20 attempts going 20 of 22 for 275 yards and three touchdowns. Auburn totaled 315 rushing yards including 119 and two touchdowns by Tank Bigsby and 110 yards and a touchdown by freshman Jarquez Hunter.

Auburn averaged 10.2 yards per carry.

“Anytime you can run the ball like that in a game, it's huge,” said Troxell. “Just building on into the next game and then the next, it will just give us confidence in the run game. This was a big confidence booster."

Auburn hosts Alabama State Saturday at 11 a.m. CT on SEC Network.