Aubserver Mailbag 170: How much did Auburn improve this spring?

This week: Paying players, the kickoff rule, basketball's ceiling, JP Pegues, Double or Nothing and Remembering Some More Guys

(Austin Perryman/Auburn Tigers)

Welcome back to the mailbag. We’ll keep this intro short and sweet again: It’s Memorial Day Weekend, which is the real start of the summer.

With that, we’re transitioning from the action of the spring — although both Auburn football and men’s basketball could still do some more work in the portal — and hitting the lookahead-heavy summer months. In this week’s mailbag, we talk about the Tigers’ spring moves in both sports and how they could impact their ceilings when school gets back in full swing this fall.

And, after going with your favorite random Auburn football players last week, I asked for your favorite random Auburn basketball players this week.

Thanks for continuing to read, listen and subscribe. Stay safe this weekend. Let’s go.

I saw that Bill C. put out his new SP+ rankings this week. Did anything significant change with Auburn and/or its opponents over the second transfer window? Are we still looking at a 6- or 7-win team?

Daniel

ESPN’s Bill Connelly is starting his annual mega-season previews for college football, and it began earlier this week with a refresh of the SP+ preseason rankings. Back in February, I broke down where Auburn football stood in the initial rankings and how it translated, game-by-game, to the 2024 schedule.

After the first transfer portal window, Auburn was No. 31 in the FBS with an SP+ rating of 8.8. After the second transfer portal window, Auburn is up to 9.7 — but that still puts the Tigers at No. 31 nationally.

As Connelly noted in his piece, the second transfer portal window moved more than 20 teams up or down at least 10 spots, but “not much changed at the top.” There was just some light shuffling, and the top quarter or so of the FBS mostly got a little bit better over the spring months. That makes sense, considering how there wasn’t a seismic amount of changes in the second transfer window, even though it was hyped up beforehand by some as a period that would do just that.

If you plug in the SP+ ratings of everybody on Auburn’s schedule into the probability calculator, Auburn’s expected win total drops from 6.8 to 6.61. Of the 11 FBS games on the Tigers’ schedule, the win probability changed less than 2% in nine of them. Cal and ULM went slightly down, while New Mexico, Oklahoma, Georgia, Missouri, Vanderbilt, Texas A&M and Alabama went slightly up. Auburn’s most likely records, in order, are still 7-5, 6-6, 8-4, 5-7 and 9-3, respectively.

The biggest differences, meanwhile, come from two games: Arkansas and Kentucky. Arkansas had a solid jump in SP+ after the second window, changing Auburn’s win probability from 76% to 67%. Kentucky was one of the biggest winners, with Auburn going from a narrow favorite (54%) to an underdog (38%) in Lexington. From what I can tell, Kentucky has moved to the top of the SEC in returning production, and that made a huge difference in where the numbers view the Wildcats now.

Now, some of you might be thinking that Auburn should have made a bigger jump in SP+ this spring, given that it addressed several needs — including the signing of former Penn State No. 1 wide receiver KeAndre Lambert-Smith.

But you have to keep in mind that half of the preseason SP+ formula is returning production, while recruiting is roughly a third. Auburn did well by adding Lambert-Smith, Isaiah Raikes, Philip Blidi, Keyron Crawford and Ronan Chambers, but it also lost No. 3 receiver Jay Fair, along with several pieces on defense, in the portal. Since returning production is weighed more than incoming talent, Auburn got better as a team yet didn’t make a sizable improvement in the numbers.

And while SP+ isn’t the be-all, end-all for college football — they’re just projections based on time-tested data for what makes teams the most successful — it’s a good reminder that what Auburn did in the second portal window was helpful but not massively impactful. Lambert-Smith and the defensive front reinforcements should make a difference. However, the bulk of who the Tigers are in 2024 was already in place. The spring window was a time for finishing touches.

If Auburn is going to make notable improvement on the field this fall, it’s going to have to come from things that the numbers can’t totally represent. The passing game is going to have to get better with a restructured staff under Hugh Freeze and some new pieces who aren’t proven at Auburn just yet. The new-look defensive scheme will need to click with the current roster, which includes the fun unknowns of massively talented true freshmen. And the Tigers are going to have to improve in the little things, the small margins that cost them multiple close games last season.

SP+ is a little lower on Auburn than the Vegas win totals, but the Tigers’ schedule is structured to pick up momentum early and heat up again late. If continuity and cohesiveness can be big difference-makers for this team in Year 2, it could outplay its current projections. Still, it’s important to remember that this is a rebuild, and recruiting wins don’t automatically translate to on-field victories.

It’s not Auburn football, but I would like your take on the Jaden Rashada lawsuit and how it might affect NIL, Florida and the legend of Billy Napier. Might this be the way we get some standardized rules for NIL?

Padre

The Jaden Rashada lawsuit is naturally going to get a ton of attention, because it’s a current SEC player suing a rival program over a ridiculous reported amount of money that no one should have ever thought was actually going to go through. Having Georgia head coach Kirby Smart “give his blessing” to Rashada suing Florida is peak college football.

But the Rashada story isn’t quite as big as another one this week — one that will drastically change college sports forever and perhaps end the Wild West era of NIL.