College Football Countdown: Ranking Difficulty of Each Auburn Opponent

Auburn football enters the 2016 season facing one the toughest schedules in all of college football, in a year where it’s imperative that Gus Malzahn have success.

Phil Steel ranks the 2016 Auburn football schedule as the fifth toughest in the nation with games against the two teams from last year’s national championship game in Clemson and Alabama.

Ranking College Football’s 25 Hardest Schedules for 2016

Nine of their 12 opponents from last year’s schedule went to a bowl game, and Jacksonville State made it to the championship game in their division. This year they also have nine teams that went to a bowl game a season ago.

As we prepare for the upcoming season – only eight weeks away – we’re going to rank each opponent for the 2016 season, giving our win probability for each matchup. We’ll do so on a level difficulty scale of 1-10 with one being an easy win and 10 being an extremely difficult game to win.

We’ll also throw in games that could be potential upsets along the way.

As we’ve been mentioning all offseason, whether you like Gus Malzahn or not, it’s imperative he find at least eight wins out of this Auburn football schedule to feel safe about his job going forward.

As we go through each team and rank their difficulty level, we’ll see that it’s going to be hard to find eight wins in this schedule unless Malzahn is able to get this offense back to its old self.

Next: Alabama A&M