Game-by-game projections for Auburn football's 2025 campaign

SP+ has the Tigers as a top-25 team in college football this season. But what does that mean for their chances at a (much) better record?

(Austin Perryman/Auburn Tigers)

AUBURN — It might be somewhat hard to believe that we’re less than three full months away from actual Auburn football being back on the field.

The offseason is long, especially for a team that has known more heartache than celebration over the last several years. Auburn is in the midst of its worst stretch as a program since the immediate post-WWII era, submarined by a woeful coaching change and stalling so far on the field with the replacement.

But it’s not like the offseason has been all doom and gloom for the Tigers. Hugh Freeze and his staff have been excellent recruiters and retainers of talent, especially given how Auburn is in a streak of four straight losing campaigns. This is the time for optimism for fans, and it’s not like the current regime has given them nothing to work with when it comes to potential.

Auburn is in a unique position among SEC teams heading into the 2025 season. The talent level on the Plains is much closer to contender level than it has been in years, and there’s some continuity at places that actually did fairly well last season — mainly on defense. But there’s a natural “believe it when you see it” mode when it comes to Auburn. That goes double, or triple, for Freeze and his offense.

So what is reasonable to expect from Auburn this fall? How do the Tigers truly measure up with their peers in an increasingly chaotic landscape of unlimited transfers, playoff expansion and shifting power conferences? What do the numbers say about this team ahead of a massive 2025?

As we’ve done in years past here at The Auburn Observer, let’s turn to SP+.

ESPN’s Bill Connelly has been the chief college football nerd for well over a decade now, pumping out the most accurate analytics-based rankings with his SP+. What is SP? It’s “a tempo- and opponent-adjusted measure of college football efficiency… a predictive measure of the most sustainable and predictable aspects of football.”

Recently, Connelly released his post-spring SP+ rankings, taking into account all the roster movement after the second portal window. With these SP+ rankings, we can look at how Auburn is expected to stack up against its 2025 schedule.

We’ll start with Auburn’s post-spring SP+ ranking. Last season, the Tigers finished with a 9.5 in SP+, which put it at 34th overall nationally. The Tigers had the 63rd offense and the 18th defense in the country, per Connelly’s numbers.

Compared to how it finished its first season under Freeze, the Tigers increased their overall ranking by two, their offensive ranking by five and their defensive ranking by 11. But Auburn also finished 84th in special teams, knocking down its overall SP+ by more than half a point. For the vast majority of college football, special teams play only fluctuates between +0.3 and -0.3 in SP+, so Auburn’s -0.8 hurt.

This season, Auburn is projected to be the 25th overall team in FBS. The Tigers currently have the 48th offense and the 19th defense, per the projections. That’s taking a solid step forward on offense and maintaining a level of defense that’s ahead of schedule, given that Auburn’s preseason defensive ranking in 2024 was 30th.

These preseason SP+ rankings are made up of three different factors: returning production, recent recruiting and recent history. Both recruiting and history weigh the last few years of a team’s recruiting and on-field performance in diminishing order — that is, four years ago isn’t as impactful as three, three isn’t as impactful as two, etc.

Connelly has also experimented with a coaching changes factor, but that doesn’t apply to Auburn, as it returned its head coach and both coordinators this season.

Meanwhile, returning production plugs into a formula that also includes the stats from incoming transfers. Using those formulas, Auburn returns an estimated 65% of its overall production for the 2025 season, which ranks 21st in the country. The Tigers bring back 67% of their offensive numbers (30th) and 63% of their defensive numbers (26th).

What’s interesting is that Auburn returned 65% of its production from 2023 to 2024, but that ranked just 40th nationally heading into the season. The end of the super senior, COVID-waiver era has been sort of a reset button across college football — and it’s worth noting Auburn got a lot out of its freshmen last fall.

(Austin Perryman/Auburn Tigers)

While the Tigers aren’t bringing back any quarterback from last season and will have to replace Jarquez Hunter and KeAndre Lambert-Smith, the production of newcomers such as Jackson Arnold, Eric Singleton Jr. and Horatio Fields help their numbers here. That formula also includes offensive line starts, which will get a boost from adding Xavier Chaplin and Mason Murphy to a room that brings back Connor Lew, Dillon Wade and Jeremiah Wright.

Defensively, Auburn has to replace five of its top seven tacklers, but there’s plenty of proven production in the secondary — Kayin Lee, Kaleb Harris, Sylvester Smith, Jay Crawford, etc. — and in the numbers of linemen like Keldric Faulk and Malik Blocton. Demarcus Riddick playing as much as he did in 2024 helped, too. Like the offense, there are big question marks, but there’s also a foundation to lean on this fall.

Auburn still has to go through fall camp before it gets to the start of the season, but we already know its roster and how it looks on paper. The same goes for the Tigers’ opponents in what will be an intriguing 2025 schedule.

As we’ve discussed throughout the offseason, Auburn’s win total in Vegas for the 2025 season is the same as it was this time last year: 7.5. The Tigers, obviously, fell well short of that number in 2024 with a 5-7 record.

But what does SP+ say about Auburn’s chances of ending its streak of losing seasons, getting back to a bowl game and potentially taking a step forward by going over that 7.5 number? Here’s a game-by-game look at how Auburn matches up with the teams on its 2025 schedule.