Mailbag 178: How confident should Auburn be heading into the season?

This week: What to watch in the opener, the recruiting rebuild, staff chemistry, calling your shots, CFB 25, All In and fake SEC restaurants

RB Damari Alston (Jamie Holt/Auburn Tigers)

We’re so back.

It’s the day before the start of the 2024 Auburn football season, which means it’s about to be the start of the fifth year of The Observer.

I say this every year, but it bears repeating here: This started as a COVID-era experiment to get through a season. Now it’s the best full-time job I’ve ever had — and it’s the only one I want to have.

Thanks to everyone who helped build this place into what it is with their loyal support over the years. From our Day 1 subscribers to our newest Inner Circle members, this only exists because of you. We can’t thank you enough.

I also want to thank everyone for rolling with our modified posting times over the last few weeks. We usually put out as much stuff as possible at 6 a.m. CT, but we’re starting to change that with the way the schedules have been. Keep that in mind moving forward.

But the mailbag will be back at its usual Friday morning time slot for the foreseeable future. While the Friday practices and availabilities made it tougher to do these during fall camp, it’s going to be a staple again during football season — and well into basketball season, because that’ll be here before you know it.

It’s a big return mailbag, and we’ve got a lot to get to in this one.

Let’s get Year 5 of The Observer kicked off, shall we?

What has been your feel for where this team thinks they should be? Do you get a sense the coaches and the players are confident about the upcoming season?

Bonus: I’ve been rewatching How I Met Your Mother and I think you need to convince the good brand (Homefield) to come out with a Marshall Erickson collection. He wore some pretty sweet Ts, including a few Auburn ones. 

sparky

Like almost any college football team in the history of the universe, Auburn is entering this season thinking that it can prove the experts wrong and outplay its preseason predictions.

That’s normal. That’s fine. That’s what players do. That’s what coaches do, sometimes. Hugh Freeze has been making sure to manage expectations as much as possible over the last couple of months. He believes his team has improved from a year ago, but he doesn’t know what that’s going to mean for the win-loss record.

“I still think it's an accurate statement to say I don't know exactly who we are just yet,” Freeze said this week. “I think we're better at a lot of spots for sure. But you've got to go prove it each and every Saturday.”

And I tend to agree with him there. Auburn has more talent on its roster than its had since Gus Malzahn was in charge. Several areas of struggle from last season — wide receiver play, defensive front depth, offensive staff cohesion, etc. — have been addressed. But there are still major question marks, like Payton Thorne’s quarterback play, pass protection on the offensive line and the thinness in the secondary.

Auburn hasn’t had a winning record since 2020. It hasn’t won eight or more games since 2019. This program isn’t used to droughts of this length, yet the talent and the opportunity needed for both of those skids to end are out there. The schedule sets up favorably for a strong start, and only the Georgia and Alabama trips look like clear-cut mismatches on the field. Eight wins and signs of clear progress are attainable.

People inside the program have their concerns about certain spots and how the roster might hold up over the course of a long season. Coaches will spend each week worrying about them, because that’s what coaches do. The players believe in themselves, and there is a different feeling at the start of this season than the last several — and it might just be the fact Auburn isn’t scrambling to figure out who is going to do what when the games get rolling.

Some players have said they think that they have what it takes to shock the world and make a run in 2024. A bigger number of them, though, have talked all offseason about how much they want to build a foundation for the future. They want to have played a part in getting Auburn back to championship contention, even if they don’t experience the direct results of that labor themselves.

“We talk about it all the time — the 2020 guys — we’re like ‘Dude, remember this? Remember that?’” tight end Brandon Frazier said during fall camp. “There’s a bunch of ‘remember this,’ but now we’re trying to kinda leave our footprint this year for the new guys that just came in and kinda lay the foundation. That was a big thing Freeze told me, coming back. He was saying, ‘I’d love for you to kinda set the foundation for what we’re going to have in the future.’ And I was like, ‘I believe in what you’re doing, and I think this is going to work.’”

No one who has to put their bodies and livelihoods on the line each week is going to call this a “bridge year.” They have to go into every single game thinking they can win. That’s what competitors do. But this is a bridge year. The Tigers want to win enough to keep their strong recruiting classes in place and be even better in the near future.

There’s a quiet sense of confidence that things are going to look better for Auburn football in 2024. The likelihood of that improvement — and the extent of it — will be revealed over the next three months. If you call yourself an Auburn fan, I think you can reasonably expect a stronger product. This, after all, is still a rebuilding project.

Bonus: Apparently How I Met Your Mother used a company that specialized in college shirts for its wardrobe department. I feel confident in saying that, had Homefield Apparel existed when the show was on the air, that Marshall would have worn a Painter Aubie shirt.

What do you think will be the most obvious and significant struggle for Auburn in the opener game, and throughout the season?

Benjamin