Auburn Tigers football coach Hugh Freeze has been endlessly questioned if he has the chops to raise a talented roster's ceiling above what the program has been finishing with over the last several years since his arrival.
On Saturday night, UGA Dawgs football coach Kirby Smart might be the one on trial in the court of public opinion after a second loss this season under the lights at Jordan-Hare Stadium.
USA Today's Eddie Timanus believes Georgia is on upset alert when the Bulldogs take the field in East Central Alabama.
"When it comes to keeping its quarterback upright, no team in the Bowl Subdivision has done it worse than Auburn. The Tigers of the Plains have surrendered 21 sacks through their five games. Those numbers are somewhat skewed by the fact that nine of them came in one single outing against Oklahoma, but it’s still not hard to fathom why the offense is stuck in neutral – or sometimes in reverse," Timanus wrote.
"But getting after the passer is not something Georgia does well, and the Bulldogs’ defense as a whole hasn’t resembled the kind of shutdown units we’re used to seeing in Kirby Smart’s program. The defensive side of the ball hasn’t been bad at Auburn, keeping the Tigers within a single score despite the offensive struggles. And oh yeah, this is an old rivalry that has plenty of juice regardless of records. This smells like an upset."
A combination of a UGA defense that's not up to par with the units of Glenn Schumann's past -- perhaps wandering eyes at Power 4 head coaching jobs is distracting him --, an Auburn offense that's seemingly due to look legitimate, and a DJ Durkin-coached defense that's singlehandedly keeping the Tigers afloat through two unimpressive SEC matchups against the Oklahoma Sooners and Texas A&M Aggies, makes Week 7 an interesting upset opportunity on the Plains.
Gunner Stockton is going to be aggressive in the run game, but stopping him in the backfield and preventing explosive plays from the Bulldogs' sneaky quarterback could be a difference-maker in and of itself. The rest is on Jackson Arnold opening up the run game for AU offensively, allowing Jeremiah Cobb and Damari Alston to take advantage and run over the Dawgs, and killing Georgia's secondary with strategically timed deep balls.
You don't have to imagine too hard what an Auburn win could look like. One prominent USA Today writer sees the vision.