What does Auburn football have left to play for this year?
This program hasn't been itself over the last several seasons. But it has a chance to get back to its roots: Ruining things for somebody else.
(Austin Perryman/Auburn Tigers)
AUBURN — What Auburn football has put on the field this season — and the last several seasons — hasn’t been up to the standard of the program.
No one should have the Tigers to realistically compete for championships this year. The same went for last year, which was Hugh Freeze’s first. The damage to the program that had been done under Bryan Harsin was extensive.
But the bleeding hasn’t been stopped. Auburn needs a pair of upsets in order to just make a bowl game and have a chance to avoid its fourth straight losing record. That hasn’t happened since the post-World War II, pre-Shug Jordan era. The Tigers have also lost at least five conference games in each of those seasons, which hasn’t happened since the SEC became a thing.
Regressing in Year 2 under Freeze — both on offense and in the win column — is a bad sign. It will put more pressure on him to get things fixed in the offseason and start truly capitalizing on the elite recruiting that has largely defined his tenure.
Still, while Auburn hasn’t met the expectations of what is historically a top-15 college football program, there’s still an outside chance that it can do the other thing that it’s known for: Chaotically destroying somebody else’s season.
“Ruining things is all Auburn has ever done for themselves and others,” friend of the newsletter Spencer Hall once wrote. “They may not mean to, but they do. It is in the program’s DNA to be present at moments in college football history when something must go skidding far awry of its preferred destination.”
So, let’s set the scene for this Saturday night inside Jordan-Hare Stadium: Texas A&M is 8-2. Texas A&M has a great shot at making the SEC Championship Game for the first time in program history and going to the new 12-team College Football Playoff.
All Texas A&M has to do is beat a 4-6 Auburn team on Saturday night, and it will set up a gigantic regular-season finale against hated rival Texas. The winner of that game might play itself into Atlanta and, potentially, a playoff bye.
Even Texas A&M head coach Mike Elko had a hard time avoiding the allegations of looking past Auburn and towards Texas:
Auburn didn’t open the season intending to be the great “ruiner of things” at this point in the year. But that’s where the Tigers are, and they’ve got an opportunity to knock the Aggies and the rival Crimson Tide out of the playoff over the next two weeks.
“We want to be spoilers,” edge rusher Jalen McLeod said Tuesday. “They're playing for the 12-team playoff, and we want to spoil that. The crowd knows that, we know that. And we're both going to bring energy. So it's going to be electrifying.”
(Zach Bland/Auburn Tigers)
The way this season has gone, Auburn shouldn’t be expected to beat Texas A&M on Saturday night in Jordan-Hare Stadium. The Tigers’ offense has been far too inconsistent, letting down a defense that is approaching top-10 status nationally in yards allowed per play this season.
But, to their credit, the Tigers haven’t thrown in the towel this season. They’ve only been thoroughly beaten once all year — a road loss to Georgia — and have thrown away more opportunities to win than they have had straight-up losses.
After scoring just seven points in a home loss to Vanderbilt, Auburn had an off week and a sleepy paycheck game against Louisiana-Monroe. That could have gone poorly for the Tigers, yet they played an extremely rare penalty-free game and put up strong performances on both sides of the ball.
“Our kids have kept fighting, and kept coming to practice with us and our staff,” Freeze said Monday. “We've tried to make changes that give these young kids more and more confidence. … We limited some of the things we asked them to do. Hopefully, that success will breed over to a great week of practice and prep for an outstanding A&M team.”
Auburn hasn’t been eliminated from bowl contention just yet this season. Of course, getting there would require an upset win over Texas A&M and having this particular team be the first one to win a road Iron Bowl in Tuscaloosa since Cam Newton and the magical 2010 team. Better Auburn teams have tried and failed to do so since then.
Fans might have written off the rest of this season and jumped fully into basketball mode. But, internally, there’s no sense in doing that. Auburn has entered every game thinking it had a chance to win, and it’s basically proven that throughout the season.
Why stop now?