Observations: Alabama 28, Auburn 14
A lack of finishing chances led to a frustrating, yet fitting, end to a 2024 season in which the Tigers knew they could have done more.
RB Jarquez Hunter (Zach Bland/Auburn Tigers)
TUSCALOOSA — Auburn entered the 2024 college football season No. 9 in the SEC on the 247Sports Team Talent Composite — a measurement of how much recruiting star power that a roster has.
Alabama was No. 1 in the SEC and No. 1 in the country. Its score of 1,018.28 points was the highest in the history of the metric.
With that in mind, no one would have been surprised back in August that the two teams would end November with Alabama taking a two-touchdown win over Auburn at home.
Yes, Auburn is in a rebuild, and it’s one that Hugh Freeze wants to do mostly through high school recruiting instead of leaning too heavily on the transfer portal. The Tigers don’t have the sheer volume of talent that other rivals have at this point, and they fell behind even further in the post-Gus Malzahn era.
“I've said it before: some of the teams we're playing, and in this particular game, they've had top-5 recruiting classes a lot of straight years,” Freeze said. “We've had one top-10 class and hopefully we're getting ready to have a second. Nobody really wants to hear that. I know it's true.”
But Freeze even admits that the talent gap excuse only goes so far. He said so himself Saturday night, after Auburn’s 28-14 loss to Alabama.
“At the same time, we had chances to win games with who we are,” Freeze continued. “And that's the frustrating part for everyone, me included.”
In a frustratingly fitting finale to the 2024 season — one in which Auburn regressed to one fewer win than last year, even though it had better yards per play metrics on both offense and defense — the Tigers had their chances to overcome that talent gap and truly compete for an upset against the loaded Crimson Tide.
To pull off a win like that, though, Auburn would have to be better in terms of execution and take advantage of the opportunities that a mistake-prone Alabama would present.
Excluding a late garbage-time drive, Auburn finished the game with six scoring opportunities in which it had the ball inside the Alabama 40. Alabama, meanwhile, only had five. Alabama also had four turnovers before Auburn had one.
But Alabama scored 28 points on its five scoring opportunities for an average of 5.6 points per chance. Auburn scored 14 on its six scoring opportunities for an average of 2.3 points per chance.
Even worse, Auburn took those four turnovers from Alabama — including two inside the hosts’ own territory — and turned them into a grand total of two made field goals.
Upsets require underdogs to capitalize on their breaks. Even Auburn’s wild four-overtime home win over Texas A&M last week was a shining example of that. But the Tigers, at a greater disadvantage away from Jordan-Hare Stadium against a better team, didn’t do that this time.
Instead, Auburn lost another game in which it felt like it had a real chance, and its 2024 season is now over. The Tigers have now recorded four straight losing seasons for the first time since the end of the 1940s.
Freeze and his staff can recruit. They have an opportunity to sign, potentially, a top-five class later this week. They also have done a good job of putting together a team that won’t give up in the face of adversity and play all the way to the end.
They’ll have a chance to further upgrade their roster and make necessary changes this offseason. But, heading into Year 3, there’s a real feeling that a program like Auburn should be doing more in terms of the win column.
And Freeze will tell you that himself.
Here are four Observations from Auburn’s 28-14 loss to Alabama in the Iron Bowl.
TE Rivaldo Fairweather (Austin Perryman/Auburn Tigers)
Auburn’s 2024 was defined by a lack of finishing
When Auburn racked up a much-improved yards per play mark but still went 0-for against power-conference opponents in the month of September, there was a belief that the Tigers would eventually get the scores that reflected the offense once they stopped turning the ball over so much.
Then October came, with Auburn taking a step back in production in road losses to Georgia and Missouri. The Tigers put up nearly 500 yards in a much-needed win over Kentucky, but they only scored 24 points with all that explosiveness. And only scoring seven points in a home loss to Vanderbilt sent the offense right back down.
Auburn averaged 6.1 yards per play Saturday against Alabama, which was the most it had in an Iron Bowl since the 2014 shootout in Tuscaloosa. Yet it only scored one touchdown.
This is what Auburn’s offense was in 2024: A unit that was better at moving the ball, but even worse at scoring it. The Tigers averaged just 18.6 points per game against power-conference competition, which is the worst mark for the program since the cratering 2012 campaign.