Auburn 42 Ball State 3. I apologize for the super late post. The week just got away from me. I initially put this off because I did not know exactly what to say about this game. I guess first is Auburn picked a good cupcake. Ball State is one of the worst college football teams in the country, period. They were not even in the same hemisphere talent-wise as Auburn. The stats bore it all out. Auburn had almost 500 yards of offense. Jackson Arnold and Jeremiah Cobb had career days and the defenase held Ball State to under 100 total yards and should have had a shutout if not for an absolutely horrendous call. I mean from the stat line Auburn was nearly perfect...
However while the stat line looked good for the offense I think everyone who watched the same noticed some issues. The offense was just not sharp on several drives in the first half. There is still just something wrong with this offense. I think some of the issues are Jackson Arnold. He looks like a baseball thrower to me that does not have a lot of touch but I think it is more coaching. I have the same questions I had last week, how can Auburn being in the second year with this coaching staff and this offense not look sharper? Auburn has massively upgraded at all positions and their talent is showing through but there is still something wrong with this offense.
Auburn gets one more warm-up game and then we will see where this team is really at. I have finally settled on the number I think Hugh Freeze has to win this season. Assuming now he beats South Alabama and Mercer, I think with the talent on this roster he now has to win at least FIVE conference games. That will give Auburn its first winning conference record since 2019. I would hope one of those is Georgia or Bama but either way I think that is what this coaching staff has to achieve this season and that assuming Auburn will have some injuries as well. That happens to everyone every football season and I am sick of the coaches and the homer web sites using it as an all-encompassing excuse.
Around the SEC... My biggest takeaway from watching the SEC this season is that NIL has really helped even the playing field, as in letting other conferences and teams catch up to the SEC. Big bad Bama and Georgia who utterly dominated for quite a few years (when they were doing NIL and everyone else was not) now look a lot closer to everyone else. I hate a lot of things about NIL and all that is going on in college football but that is one of the good things. I think Texas is obviously quite a bit overrated but with their fixed easy conference schedule they have a cakewalk to the SEC Championship game. I think LSU is also overrated as always but that was a huge win last week at Clemson. There is no denying that.
I also want to give huge props to Mississippi State for beating a ranked Arizona State team. That was a big win for State after everything they have been through the last few seasons. Also while I do not think Michigan is that good I think that was also a big win for Oklahoma. It was good to see "too cool for school, I know everything" Billy Napier gag another one at Florida. Just when it looked like he was safe, he is right back on the hot seat... Elsewhere Kentucky looks to be the bottom of the conference while you have a big jumble of solid-to-good teams in the middle. A few of those teams will have the ball bounce right for them and have a great season and a few will stumble and fall. This coming weekend will kind of unofficially kick off the race with a slew of big conference match-ups. Looking forward to it...
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