A (very) early game-by-game projection of Auburn football's 2024 season

The Tigers are looking to end their streak of losing seasons this year. But how realistic are their chances at doing that, according to SP+?

RB Jarquez Hunter (Austin Perryman/Auburn Tigers)

A week from today, Auburn football will open spring practices — the on-field start of preparations for the 2024 season.

There will be plenty of intrigue surrounding the Tigers, from the status of the starting quarterback role to the newcomers who will need to make immediate impacts.

Year 2 of the Hugh Freeze era isn’t expected to be a championship-contending one for Auburn, which will continue to rebuild its roster primarily through high school recruiting. A top-10 class should pay some instant dividends, and Freeze hasn’t been shy about pushing for a top-five class in the upcoming cycle.

But the Tigers have now had three straight losing seasons for the first time in nearly 50 years. In order for Freeze to continue to have the buy-in from the fan base, there needs to be a noticeable step forward on the field in 2024.

While another season with more losses than wins probably wouldn’t lead to another quick firing on the Plains, it would be far from ideal for a program that is playing catch-up in a new-look SEC.

Although it feels like this college football offseason has followed no sort of schedule — the coaching carousel and the transfer portal both continue to spin, even as teams take the field for spring ball — it’s time to start looking ahead.

As longtime readers of The Auburn Observer know, the gold standard of college football projections is SP+ from ESPN’s Bill Connelly. As Connelly says, “SP+ is a tempo- and opponent-adjusted measure of college football efficiency… a predictive measure of the most sustainable and predictable aspects of football.”

Last week, Connelly released his preseason SP+ rankings, following up on his returning production rankings from two weeks ago.

With these SP+ rankings, we can look at how Auburn is expected to stack up in the FBS, an SEC that now has 16 teams and — more importantly — its 2024 schedule.

Let’s start with Auburn’s SP+ ranking. Last season, the Tigers finished with a 7.6 in SP+, which put it at No. 36 overall nationally. The Tigers had the No. 68 offense and the No. 29 defense in the country, per Connelly’s numbers.

This season, Auburn is projected to be the No. 31 overall team in FBS. The Tigers currently have the No. 45 offense and the No. 30 defense.

These preseason rankings have several components: returning production, recent recruiting and recent history. Returning production is the easiest one of these to measure, and Connelly has a formula that plugs in well to SP+.

For offensive production, 23.5% is returning wide receiver and tight end receiving yards, 24% is returning quarterback passing yards, 47.5% is returning offensive line snaps and 5% is returning running back rushing yards.

For defensive production, since positional units aren’t always strictly defined, the formula is 69.5% returning tackles, 12.5% returning interceptions and pass breakups, 10.5% returning tackles for loss and 8% returning sacks.

(Zach Bland/Auburn Tigers)

Using those formulas, Auburn returns an estimated 65% of its overall production for the 2024 season, which ranks No. 50 in the country. The Tigers bring back 74% of their offense (No. 27) but just 55% of their defense (No. 78).

On offense, Auburn is bringing back its top passer, its top four running backs, three of its top four receivers and four of its top seven offensive linemen from last season.

While the Tigers were a bottom-half offense in 2023, they aren’t having to hit a total reset button on their unit from Year 1 to Year 2. Auburn is going to make changes, as evidenced by the recruiting and the coaching overhaul on that side of the ball, but there is a foundation of familiarity that wasn’t always there last year.

Defensively, Auburn is in much more of a rebuilding mode — and under new management. Less than half of the players who recorded at least 20 tackles last season are back. The top player in both sacks and tackles for loss is off to the NFL. Returning players only make up two of the 12 interceptions from last season, too.

There are some key players back in the front two levels, but this is going to have a much different look from what was a solid defense in 2023.

Things can change between now and the start of the season. There’s another transfer portal window after practices, and there’s a ton of development time taking place across the spring, summer and early fall.

But we know the bulk of who will be out there for Auburn in 2024, and we know that for its opponents, too. With that in mind, we can start projecting what the expectations for the Tigers should be in the fall.

The first round of win totals for the 2024 college football season came out earlier this month on FanDuel. Right now, Auburn is at 7.5 wins — meaning the Tigers are expected to take some sort of step forward with their on-field results.

How does that compare to SP+ projections? Let’s take a game-by-game look at how Auburn matches up with the teams on its 2024 schedule.