Heading into the bye week, the Auburn football team is sitting at a 3-2 record with losses to Florida and Tennessee. Many fans were hopeful that the Tigers would have gotten off to a stronger start, especially with the tougher portion of the schedule still left to play.
It's safe to say after the Tigers' 24-14 loss at Tennessee that the morale of Auburn fans has dropped significantly, and there's much less hope to go around. Paul Finebaum delivered a brutal verdict on the rest of first-year head coach Alex Golesh's season on McElroy and Cubelic in the Morning.
"The season feels over to me, and I know that sounds like an over hyperbolic statement, but everybody knew how important that game was and everyone felt that game was winnable,” Finebaum said. "And I think anyone who saw the game knew that it was winnable. The defense did everything it could and kept them in a game while Tennessee could not have been struggling any more.”
As Finebaum points out, it seems to be the same old story for the Auburn football program: the Tigers have a defense that shows up and shows out through four quarters while they have an offense who goes three-and-out time and time again.
Auburn had multiple chances to come back and win at Rocky Top, especially with a fourth quarter touchdown pass from Byrum Brown to Arlis Boardingham. But the offense quickly reverted to its old ways, failing to convert on a 4th and 1 and then turning over the ball with an interception from Brown.
“Even as Auburn was marching in the fourth quarter, I still felt like they might pull out something. They might pull out a miracle here,” Finebaum said. "And then it’s just, okay, you know, it felt like suddenly I was watching last year all over again, and Hugh Freeze was calling the plays.”
Are things really as bad as they were last season under Hugh Freeze? I'd argue that we have not reached that point yet. Golesh led his team to win a close game in the season opener against Baylor, something that Freeze repeatedly failed to do, and Golesh also led the Tigers to their first SEC home win in over 650 days with the victory over Vanderbilt.
While the program is nowhere near where everyone would like it to be, I believe that Golesh has things on an upward trajectory when you look at the big picture.
Add us as a preferred source on Google