By Robert Wilson
The New Orleans Bowl Tuesday at the New Orleans Superdome will be Southern Miss senior quarterback Braylon Braxton’s last college football game. He wants to finish his career and his senior season with a win.
“This is our last college football game ever,” Braxton said. “We will never get to play college football after this game. Why would you not go play, especially the way we finished. We would love to finish on a high note. Get that bad taste out of our mouth. I’m grateful for the opportunity to play college football. There are a lot of high school skids that don’t get that chance. Let alone start and be contributor to teams.”
Braxton has had an outstanding college career, especially his last two seasons. He was named the Sun Belt Conference Offensive Player of the Year after passing for 1,624 yards and 19 touchdowns and leading Marshall to the Sun Belt championship last year as a junior, then he passed for 2,795 yards and 23 TDs despite being injured, missing one game and not fully healthy in the last two, and led Southern Miss to a turnaround season, winning seven games, six more than last season. The Golden Eagles were one win away from playing in the Sun Belt Conference championship game.
Braxton passed for a career-high 400 yards against South Alabama this season, tying for the eighth most passing yards in a game in school history.
He has passed for 5,764 yards (1,345 at Tulsa, 1,624 at Marshall and 2,795 at Southern Miss) and 54 TDs (12 at Tulsa, 19 at Marshall and 23 at Southern Miss) in his college career.
Braxton suffered a right knee injury against Arkansas State in the ninth game of the season, missed the Texas State game and wasn’t 100 percent in the last two games in losses to South Alabama and Troy.
Braxton gets one last try when he and his teammates meet Western Kentucky Tuesday at 4:30 p.m. on ESPN.
While it is Braxton and his senior teammates’ last game it is Blake Anderson’s first game as Southern Miss head coach after being promoted from offensive coordinator when first-year Southern Miss head coach Charles Huff left to take the head coaching job at Memphis.
This is Southern Miss’ first bowl game since 2022.
“This isn’t a vacation trip, a go have fun trip,” Braxton said. “We are going to down there to win this game. We love the game of football. Any opportunity that we get to play, we are going to go play, especially me, (safety) J Mo (Josh Moten), and these seniors.
“We set a goal at the first of the season to be conference champions. We fell short of that goal. We were one game away. We would love to have that conference championship trophy but we could be the champions of something else. That the message we have been preaching. I’m focused on getting this wins for the organization, this team and this community. We owe it to them to finish the right way.”
Braxton won’t be doing it alone. He has plenty of talented teammates, including one of the best tacklers in the country in Hartfield Academy alumnus and sophomore linebacker Chris Jones. Jones has 129 tackles, which is the most by a Golden Eagle since Gerald McGrath, who had 137 tackles in 2008. Jones ranks No. 7 in the country and first in the Sun Belt with 10.7 tackles per game.
“We are going to win this last game of the seniors,” Jones said. “That’s our main mission. They put a lot on the line this season, sacrificed their bodies, and worked hard and they deserved to get a win and we want to do it for them.”
