One Mistake Too Many For Auburn

Let’s reiterate something every college football fan should understand. Auburn is a
very good football team.

Don’t let their loss to Texas A&M fool you.

It’ll be easy now to write off Auburn as a national pretender instead of contender.
After all, they just lost at home to a Texas A&M team only three weeks
removed from a 59-0 annihilation at the hands of Alabama.

Plus, they’re supposed to be unbeatable at home, right? Prior to last night, Gus
Malzahn was undefeated in Jordan-Hare Stadium as Auburn’s head coach.

But don’t be deceived, Auburn is still a very good football team. So good, in fact,
that they’ve become quite adept at beating themselves.

And what happened Saturday afternoon was inevitable.

Ever since the LSU win, Auburn’s best game of year (maybe in five years), the Tigers
have been playing with a fully loaded AK-47 pointed right at their feet. It
turns out Auburn has had quite the trigger finger the past 240 football minutes.

These last four games have been littered with mental errors: missed assignments,
turnovers, penalties, and just about anything else you could imagine.

With nine turnovers and 31 penalties for 319 yards in that stretch, it’s actually a
miracle that Auburn went 2-2 through it.

After having an incredible first five games (306.6 yards and 14.4 points per game),
the Auburn defense has apparently forgotten how to tackle, cover receivers, or
play defense in general. 486 yards and 36.3 points per game won’t cut it.

I’ve wondered if Auburn defenders are out there just because you technically have to
have bodies on the field.

But you can’t pin the loss entirely on the defense. Every team wins and loses as
just that: a team.

The Auburn offense laid an egg at the end of the Texas A&M game, despite really
hitting its stride the past three weeks. Ever since the LSU win, Auburn’s
offense has been putting up huge numbers, averaging 519 yards of total offense
(309.5 rushing) and 34.5 points per game.

Saturday afternoon, Cameron Artis-Payne, furthering his hold on the title as the SEC’s rushing leader, had a career-best 221 yards and two touchdowns. Nick
Marshall added in 286 total yards and three touchdowns, as the Tigers rolled up 582 total yards as a team.

But all anyone will remember are the fumbles. One happened at the goal line on a
simple read option.

The other came on a botched snap.

Egregious mistakes on back-to-back fourth quarter drives that would have likely led to
touchdowns will our only memory of an otherwise fantastic performance by Nick
Marshall and Co.

These miscues have been occurring all season, but never at as crucial a time as the
end of a game. Prior to Auburn’s second loss, the Tigers had thrived on
overcoming self-inflicted wounds to win games in their final moments.

It felt as though Auburn kept trying its luck game after game, shooting itself in
the foot repeatedly just to see if it could keep walking. Like holding your
hand over a fire until the very last moment, before you know you’ll get burned.

And for six out of seven games, they had gotten away with it. Then, on Saturday,
Auburn made just one mistake too many.

Auburn certainly plays with heart, but they forget to play with discipline as well.
The mistakes, the mental errors, are not akin to championship teams.

It’s entirely possible that Auburn could be staring at a 5-4 overall record right
now.

That second loss had to happen eventually. Auburn could not continue to turn the
ball over, commit penalties, and play bad defense at critical moments and still
win football games.

That’s not championship football.

And what makes Auburn’s two losses even more frustrating is know how good the
Tigers are when they are at their best.

We saw it against LSU, but against the backdrop of the rest of the season, it
seems like a fleeting glimpse of what could have been.

Even in victory, Auburn’s games have been plagued by the same mental lapses that
have cost them their shot at the College Football Playoff.

It’s possible (reasonable, in fact) to believe that we were spoiled by that LSU win.
We witnessed firsthand what Auburn’s best game looked like, we want that to
happen every game, and we become perplexed when it doesn’t.

Of course, it isn’t fair to expect a perfect game out of the Tigers every week; no
one is capable of that. But we know they can get closer to perfect than they
did Saturday night than they have the past four games.

The solution is simple (not easy, but simple): the mistakes have to stop. It doesn’t
matter how talented your team is if they’re just as good at beating themselves
as an opponent.

It doesn’t matter if you pick up 20 yards on a zone read if you’ll be marching ten
yards back for a holding call.

It doesn’t matter if you defended a pass on third down if the ref has tossed a
flag for pass interference.

Holding, pass interference, false starts, offsides,

I still maintain a strong belief that Auburn’s best might be the best in the
nation. When they get out of their own way, no one can stop them. They have all
of the tools to be great, and they’ve shown it week after week.

Don’t be fooled; Auburn is still a very good football team. But the mistakes have to
stop.

This team is as good as they will allow themselves to be.