Observations: Oklahoma 27, Auburn 21
The Tigers were 11 minutes from a much-needed W over a ranked foe. Then the latest meltdown inside Jordan-Hare Stadium happened.
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QB Payton Thorne (Taylor McLaughlin/Auburn Tigers)
It’s first-and-10 at the opponent’s 33-yard line with an 11-point lead at home and 11 minutes left on the clock.
According to the numbers, the team with the ball in that situation has a win probability of 96.5%. That’s even more favorable, statistically, than being on defense in fourth-and-goal from the 31 with 43 seconds left and a 4-point lead at home (95.1%).
Inside the span of seven games, Hugh Freeze’s Auburn football team has experienced the other 4.9% — and now the other 3.5%.
Auburn blew an 11-point fourth-quarter lead and lost to Oklahoma, 27-21, on Saturday. It was another massive meltdown inside Jordan-Hare Stadium for a team that has lost six of its last eight, with the only two wins coming against a bad FCS team and arguably the worst FBS team in the country.
With the exception of the inexplicable 21-point defeat to New Mexico State that started this skid and a lifeless bowl loss to Maryland, the Tigers have had their opportunities to win.
They’ve now lost to Alabama, California, Arkansas and Oklahoma — at home — by a combined 26 points since their last victory over any power-conference team.
“I couldn’t be prouder of their effort and their preparation and the way they worked,” Freeze said. “I thought they played harder and deserved to win the game. And I’ve got to find a way to help them win these games.
“It’s not on them and their effort today.”
Auburn has been unable to finish a game against a legitimate opponent in a while. It hasn’t beaten a power-conference team that finished with a winning record since Ole Miss in 2021. That was nearly 35 whole months and multiple head coaches ago.
The meltdown on Saturday began in what should have been an ideal situation. Jarquez Hunter got Auburn to the Oklahoma 33 with an 11-point lead.
Then Payton Thorne, who had played quite well in his return to the starting lineup, threw back-to-back incompletions. After a fruitless third-and-long run, Towns McGough missed a 51-yard field goal.
A drive that should have worked the clock lasted 1:31.
Oklahoma’s struggling offense finally hit a deep shot on the ensuing drive and cut Auburn’s lead to five. Then the Tigers marched across midfield before facing a third-and-4.
Thorne threw an interception — his first of the game, but his sixth of the season — that was returned by Oklahoma for a go-ahead touchdown. Even the drive that took more than four minutes off the clock was a failure, and a familiar one for Auburn.
Auburn had two more chances to drive the field and pull off an improbable comeback of its own, but it couldn’t.
Two empty drives from earlier in the game stood out even more. The Tigers were stopped on fourth-and-goal from the 1 in the first quarter and missed a short field goal in a chaotic end to the second quarter with highly questionable clock management.
And that’s how Auburn went from what could have been a potential turnaround win over a ranked Oklahoma team to suffering its latest mind-boggling loss. Freeze is now two games under .500 as Auburn’s head coach.
Auburn didn’t lose its third game last season until the middle of October. Auburn has already hit that point before getting out of September — even though the Tigers spent this entire month playing nothing but home games.
Week by week, it’s getting tougher to see a way out of this for Auburn. A Year 2 that needed to feature improvement has seen regression in the win-loss column.
The Tigers have a better roster and had a favorable schedule. And yet, even with a more explosive offense and a defense that’s getting off the field at a higher rate, Auburn is worse in the area that matters most: What it says on the scoreboard.
“After a while, you get tired of silver linings, to be honest with you,” Thorne said. “It gets old, and guys don't want to hear that. We're all competitors in there, and, at the end of the day, you only want to hear that so much. … If you just look at it black and white, there is some of that, but you get tired of it after a while.
“It's time to win, and we weren't able to do that today.”
Here are four Observations from Auburn’s 27-21 loss to Oklahoma, along with the Quote of the Night.