2025 GAME 10 REVIEW: Deuces Wild

Auburn 62  Mercer 17.  The Auburn offense rolled up another 500+ yards of offense in their second game after former head coach Hugh Freeze was fired and the general consensus from just about everyone is just how bad a job Freeze did with this unit.  In two games albeit against lesser defenses the Auburn offense has looked better than at ANY TIME under Freeze and that includes his games against lesser defenses.  Of course this site has been calling Freeze out all season but now I think everybody is on the same page.  So one more time...  Hugh Freeze was the worst X's and O's coach I have ever seen.  I think everyone agrees he does not deserve the buy out after seeing the Auburn offense the last two games and if they eclipse 20 points against Bama (something he could not do against ANYBODY) it will be completely confirmed.  What a complete waste of a season.

We also learned that one of Freeze's many mistakes with the Auburn offense was his evaluation of the quarterback room.  We learned last game that Ashton Daniels was a much better quarterback than Jackson Arnold.  This game we learned that freshman Deuce Knight is a much better quarterback than Jackson Arnold which means that Hugh Freeze was purposely starting his third string quarterback the majority of the season.  Yes he recruited and paid over a million dollars to a guy who really was not good enough to make the two-deep depth chart.  You just have to shake your head at the absolute stupidity of those in charge at Auburn University to hire two absolute incompetent inept clowns like Bryan Harsin and Hugh Freeze.  I mean is there any chance of just hiring a decent football coach this time???

Yes it was Mercer but Auburn freshman quarterback Deuce Knight put up an all-time performance being responsible for SIX TOUCHDOWNS, four running and two passing.  The only other Auburn players to be responsible for six touchdowns in a game are Cam Newton and Cadillac Williams.  That is a pretty exclusive club right there.  Knight put up almost 400 yards of offense as well scoring those touchdowns.  I mean Mercer or not, you do not see that kind of performance very often.  This started many people including me thinking that while Auburn sat Ashton Daniels to give him another year of eligibility, whoever takes over might want to think about immediately paying Deuce and building on him rather than maybe wasting a year with Daniels.  You have to think Deuce Knight will leave if he is a planned back up next season if he doesn't leave anyway.

I do not think anything else significant came out of this game.  It was simply the Deuce Knight show well other than Cam Coleman making another incredible catch on one of Knight's touchdown throws.  I think Cam Coleman is the best wide receiver in the country.  It is criminal he was wasted on this lost season.  Unfortunately I think the odds of Auburn keeping him are very long indeed.  I think every top team in the country will line up with money in hand for his signature.  I think there is a good chance he will be the highest paid receiver in the country next season.  If he does leave all Auburn can hope for is that somehow he is able to put in a legendary performance in the Iron Bowl next week to end this season.  If he leaves Auburn hopefully has a back up plan in resigning one or more of Eric Singleton, Malcolm Simmons and Perry Thompson.

The wild west that is college football and trying to keep or get talent on your team has become the biggest job for every staff and the biggest subject of conversation with hardcore fans.  I know I talked about it a lot this week.  Auburn and pretty much every other school needs a smart "general manager" and "front office" to make all of these player decisions.  It is everything.  You look at the NFL, the teams that win make smart roster decisions and the perennial losers cannot make a good decision to save their lives.  Regardless of the coach who takes over Auburn will have a ton of work to do on building next year's roster.  Outside of retaining Coleman, Cobb, some of the other wide receivers and defensive players the Tigers must look for offensive tackles and an edge rusher again plus plug any other holes that come from defections.    

These decisions though will not start for one more week as there is one more game to be played.  On the surface even with Auburn's improved play it is still hard to believe they can actually win the biggest game.  The Tigers are a much better team than their record but unless they upset the Tide they will still end with one of the worst conference records in the history of the school at 1-7.   So many people say that anything can happen in this game but they are dead WRONG.  Anything can happen when Auburn is a good team.  Auburn has NEVER beaten Bama with a losing record in the modern era of college football, NEVER.  The last time an Auburn team with a losing record beat Bama was 1949 so as good as Auburn has looked the last two weeks history says it will be just another close loss to add to the long list this season.  

I made my bold prediction that Auburn would beat Vandy and while it almost came true it did not.  That game, this long losing season and the four previous losing seasons that included giving away two home wins over Bama have robbed me of any confidence going into this game.  I just do not have any hope left football-wise this season... and on that note Happy Thanksgiving!  

2025 GAME 9 REVIEW: Close But No Cigar

Vanderbilt 45 Auburn 38.  Please tell me that I will never ever ever see this guy pictured above play Auburn again.  Diego Pavia led Vanderbilt to complete his third win in a row over Auburn.  I am still just shaking my head over this one.  The Auburn football Tigers finally come to life on offense with the chains of Hugh Freeze gone only to die on defense.  This team with all this talent now looks like it will end this season at 1-7 in the conference, Auburn's worst conference record since the worst season ever in 2012, worse than both Harsin years and the last two Freeze seasons (!!!!).  It literally boggles the mind.  I wrote last week I thought Auburn would do something amazing and win this game.  It started just as I hoped it would with Auburn going up 20-3...

HOWEVER ONCE AGAIN just like Georgia, just like Missouri, Auburn had the ball FIRST AND GOAL AT THE ONE and managed to BLOW IT AGAIN.  SHOCKER another Xavier Chaplin procedure penalty!  Auburn had to settle for the field goal AGAIN.  It should have been 24-3 and yes I think that would have put Auburn over the top just like those other games.  I have never seen a team blow so many opportunities on the goal line in a season in my life.  I mean yes the offense was much better and we will get to that but when you have it first and goal on the one yard line against a good team you NEED TO SCORE A TOUCHDOWN.  Yes I think it made that big a difference.  I have never seen a worse coached team when it comes to procedure penalties in my life.  Here is a suggestion for this open week, how about the offensive line work on this ONE THING till it is FIXED.

I am sorry I am not opening this post acting like Auburn just won the national championship because they looked better on offense like I have read many people doing.  I am glad Auburn looked better but they still lost the game and in that goal line situation above they looked the same as the rest of the season.  I was surprised Auburn was that good on offense but not surprised there was a major improvement even with no practice time.  As a post I read during the game said, Auburn just started playing normal football, calling normal passing plays.  I knew they did not need to do anything ground shaking.  Auburn has a really good running back and some great wide receivers!  I mean Hugh Freeze had to work really hard to make this offense as bad as it has been.  He really should be sued for malpractice.  This game was the final statement on the absolute utter incompetence of Freeze.

You really have to wonder about Freeze's sanity.  If the guy just would have let Derrick Nix call plays like Durkin did Saturday he would have had to do less (and he could play more golf) and he would have been more successful and he would still be at Auburn???!!!???  Nix is also the only legitimate big-time coach on the offensive staff.  It was a big deal Auburn was able to steal him from Lane Kiffin.  One last time, how could Freeze not see how bad he was killing the offense and not make this move?  Oh well enough, It does not matter anymore and Auburn is better off without Hugh Freeze.  Unfortunately again I think a lot of people are taking Auburn's offensive success against a bad Vanderbilt defense a little too far.  Auburn had a good game on offense but a better defense would have caused problems.

Ashton Daniels had a great game, statistically yard-wise the third best passing game in Auburn history.  However Vanderbilt dropped a couple of interceptions and he also held that ball out like a loaf of bread while running and he was lucky it was not stripped.  Also he scrambled easily for extra time against Vandy while most conference teams Auburn played this season would have stopped a lot of that as they stopped Jackson Arnold's scrambling.  Again, I was as happy as anyone to see the offensive improvement but there are just too many people taking it way too far.  I am also probably still grouchy because it also underlined in bold just how good Cam Coleman and Eric Singleton are and how Auburn has UTTERLY WASTED two of the best wide receivers ever to play at Auburn.

The Cam Coleman one-handed touchdown catch followed by another one-handed catch with the other arm (!!!) on the subsequent two-point conversion is one of the most amazing plays in Auburn history.  I just wish it would have been in a win. Singleton while not as spectacular as Coleman also had a great game.  I believe I heard it was the first time in history Auburn had two wide receivers with over a hundred yards in a game.  That sounds correct to me.  That is a big deal but again unfortunately it was in another loss.  That brings us to the defense.  Great job Coach Durkin with the offense but what happened to your side?  The Auburn defense has been one of the best in the country in scoring defense but it is now apparent after this game that most of that success is due to Auburn not playing many great passing teams.  

Vanderbilt like Baylor to start the season rolled up over 400 yards passing and 500 yards of total offense on the Auburn defense.  I mean at times Auburn was just embarrassed on defense.  Up 20-3 with less than two minutes in the first half Vandy scored in THREE PLAYS and a little over 30 seconds.  There were also several instances of Vandy wide receivers running wide open including a big touchdown.  D.J. Durkin is a good coach and he has done a great job bringing this defense together this season but like Auburn's last good defensive coordinator Kevin Steele he just gets undressed by good passing teams. Also I have used the term "third and Durkin" for two years now about Auburn propensity to give up plays on third and long.  Any way these two facts spelled doom for Auburn Saturday.

Auburn now rolls into an open week with only Mercer and Bama left.  The only drama surrounding the Mercer game is who will play quarterback?  Current starter Ashton Daniels cannot play and still redshirt giving him an extra year of eligibility.  I am not sure what Auburn does there.  I would sure like to see what Deuce Knight can do although it sounds like he has already decided to leave Auburn at the end of the season.  Regardless it all comes down to Bama, one chance at redemption.  This is one season where a win in the Iron Bowl would literally make an entire season.  Unfortunately I do not have the same optimism I had before Vanderbilt as I think Ty Simpson is right there with Diego Pavia as the best quarterbacks in the SEC and Bama's defense is miles ahead of Vanderbilt.

However I think Auburn's defense will be better at home as hopefully the Auburn faithful will get fired up one more time this season.  Auburn has three weeks to get ready for Bama and beat a solid Mercer team.  The Tigers finally showed what is possible on offense.  Now the question is can this Auburn team put it together on both sides of the ball for the first time this season in the Iron Bowl? 

2025 GAME 8 REVIEW: Winter Ends

Kentucky 10  Auburn 3.  In my almost 50 years of watching Auburn football (yes 50 years) I have seen a lot of bad games.  The worst seasons in modern Auburn football history are 1980, 1998, 2008, 2012, and the last five seasons.  The first four seasons there ended the tenures of coaches Barfield, Bowden, Tuberville, and Chizik. The last five ended the tenure of Bryan Harsin and now thank goodness the far-too-long tenure of Hugh Freeze.  I still believe everything I wrote last week.  The powers-that-be were going to keep him if he beat Kentucky (previously the worst team in the SEC) and Mercer.  Now thanks to that Kentucky team and Freeze's almost unbelievable ineptitude the plan changed.  For the final time he is the worst x's and o's coach I have ever seen in my life.

The game last night was one of if not the worst offensive game in Auburn history (and that is saying something).  The powers-that-be had no choice but to fire him after that abomination at home against the previous worst team in the SEC.  There is nothing else to say.  Let us just move on and finally blessedly look ahead.  D.J. Durkin has been named interim head coach.  I wish it had been sooner but I will take it.  It may be very short lived because it is almost impossible for an interim to change a team.  HOWEVER there are two factors here you don't usually see in a team that fires its coach midseason.  One I believe this is the most talented team with this bad a record in Auburn history.  I just believe and I maybe wrong that we will see an immediate difference Saturday.  It may not be enough but I believe we will see it. 

Next, D.J. Durkin is an experienced coach who has done a great job the last three years (with the exception of those third and longs but not going to talk about that now).  You usually do not have as good a coach in-house to take over.  He can now tailor this offense to help his defense that has been far better than I ever thought they would be.  They have been exceptional.  I saw the stat that the two other teams with defenses as good statistically as Auburn are Ohio State and Indiana who are both undefeated.  I could be wrong (and usually am) but Vanderbilt better watch out.  For those laughing, I hear you but give me this, if you have read this blog you know it does NOT happen often.  I hope he fires up the offense like he has the defense.  I would relentlessly run the ball and get good at a few play-action pass plays.  

This offensive line just cannot pass block so you have to run which helps the defense.  It also allows this line to do the one thing they might could do half decent and be aggressive.  I think it would also help the frustrated Auburn wide receivers.  There might not be as many pass plays but there would be more big plays.  I am actually excited about Saturday and I don't think I have been excited about a game since 4th and 31.  I mean I think everyone deep down knew that there was no coming back from that loss, first season or not.  It was evident early on this offense was terrible and nothing ever changed.  We just all had to watch the same crap game after game, season after season till now.  I am excited about seeing a coach that might have a different philosophy from Malzahn, Harsin, or Freeze.  I know it cannot change too much but I do not think Durkin gets this opportunity and does not try something different.

I think it is too early to discuss candidates.  All I will say is I vehemently say HELL NO to Eli Drinkwitz and Rhett Lashlee who are both GUS MALZAHN disciples who both run a version of his offense.  I CANNOT WATCH THAT CRAP AGAIN.  NO NO NO NO NO NO!!!!!!  PLEASE!  Right now lets see what Durkin can do.  I think everyone still expects Vanderbilt to win this coming Saturday but I will borrow a line from another recently retired coach...  not so fast my friend.  Everyone has sure seen the worst in Auburn over the last few years but every once in awhile and it is even rarer now but every once in awhile we get to see Auburn do something amazing.  I think a win this Saturday would be.  WAR DAMN EAGLE.