Auburn football may continue to be the red-headed stepchild of AU athletics.
With Bruce Pearl riding high with the hardwood Tigers sitting at #1 in the country, Johnnie Harris having knocked off the top team in the SEC, the Lady Vols, with the women’s team, and Suni Lee, Derrian Gobourne, and the rest of Auburn gymnastics stealing the show every Friday night, the continued off-field drama following a disappointing 2021 season on the gridiron is worrying the fanbase of the school’s historical flagship sport.
Bryan Harsin has lost his defensive coordinator and defensive line coach, fired his offensive coordinator, and now may never see the OC replacement call plays for the offense.
According to Jake ‘Jboy’ Crain, Auburn football OC hiree Austin Davis may never make his coaching debut on the Plains:
Austin Davis may be done before he starts
— Jake “JBOY” Crain (@JakeCrain_) January 31, 2022
Jboy followed up the cryptic tweet by saying that nothing is official quite yet:
I’m not going to follow up until the info is concrete. I think you would rather have it that way
— Jake “JBOY” Crain (@JakeCrain_) January 31, 2022
This would be a horrible look for the Tigers if this turns out to be true.
The football program has spent the past two seasons losing to their two main rivals head to head, Alabama and Georgia, before watching both teams win the National Championship back to back.
It’s been a tough time for the school’s flagship school the past two years under both Harsin and current UCF and former Auburn football head coach Gus Malzahn, and seeing rumors like this makes it difficult to imagine an immediate turnaround in 2022.
That said, the Class of 2022 and the returning seniors–and, fingers crossed, maybe some of the team’s incoming transfers–could well be strong enough to overcome the off-field dysfunction that has surrounded this program the past two offseasons.