Auburn football: B/R bullish on Bryan Harsin’s first year on Plains

The Auburn football program is about to see one of its most transformative seasons in school history in 2021. After a half-decade of losing in key bowl games to historically lesser foes (including but not limited to Minnesota, UCF, and Northwestern), there’s a new leading voice in the locker room…and new expectations for him too.

Bryan Harsin comes from a successful Boise State background where he brought the Broncos to three Mountain West Championships, but things are different in the state of Alabama.

Tiger fans have been hurting in 2021 due to the underperformance of almost every single athletics program. Men’s basketball had its postseason streak ended due to ambiguous eligibility issues with Sharife Cooper (as far as we know) but had a losing season anyway. Women’s basketball had another down year and removed Coach Flo from her perch. Butch Thompson’s baseball team has struggled in SEC play after a strong start to the season.

Harsin has the chance to earn some goodwill with the beautiful people of the Plains with a successful 2021 season, and according to Bleacher Report’s David Kenyon, an 8-4 year with a bowl appearance could do the trick in year one of the new regime:

"Third-year quarterback Bo Nix has a whole lot to prove, but the returning talent on defense is appealing. Auburn would need a couple of fortunate breaks to legitimately compete, since it travels to Penn State, LSU and Texas A&M in addition to hosting Georgia and Alabama. That’s about as difficult as it gets in 2021. Pick off two of them, however, and Auburn could have a respectable start to the Bryan Harsin era."

Obviously, no one expects a College Football Playoff appearance with the second hardest schedule on deck for the first-year head coach. But a road win against PSU, LSU, or TAMU or a rivalry victory over Alabama over Georgia at Jordan-Hare Stadium would be meeting expectations, and multiple wins from that bunch would qualify as exceeding expectations.

We shall see what 2021 has in store, but Auburn football fans finally feel the winds of change blowing.

Let’s just hope they blow the Tigers in the right direction.