THREE OBSERVATIONS
1. Auburn found a way to lose again.
Make no mistake about it — the Tigers should have won this game against Oklahoma. Against long odds, Auburn found ways to keep its ground game churning against a terrific run defense and gave this offense, this quarterback, the kind of balance needed to keep things moving in winning direction.
Auburn gained 492 yards. Oklahoma gained 291.
Auburn finished with 26 first downs. Oklahoma had 11.
When Hugh Freeze shows up to press conferences talking about how his team deserved to win or that they'd win nine of the next nine games played against Arkansas, those are the kinds of numbers he sees. On one hand, those numbers validate him. They demonstrate that, yes, he still understands how to exploit SEC defenses and, yes, he still knows how to administrate an offense that can move the football.
Still, those same numbers haunt him. They will haunt him for a long time, perhaps forever considering how things are progressing.
He knows his system works and he still doesn't get the satisfaction of savoring a victory. That's two weeks in a row. Turnovers were the devil last week. This week's catastrophe was de-centralized; kicker Towns McGough missed two key field-goal attempts, a possession ended at the 1-yard line without a single point added to the Tigers' total, the pick six gave Oklahoma a lifeline, two critical coverage busts gave Oklahoma an escape route late.
And then it was over.
Blame is in abundant supply on the Plains right now and there are plenty of places to apply it. My view? Thorne played a good game generally speaking. The players remedied their turnover problem. This one is a function of a team that expects things to go awry; it played with less confidence as the game approached its conclusion. That means there isn't enough resistance against the challenges that arise late in league games.
Oklahoma isn't awesome. Oklahoma, in fact, is more flawed than Auburn.
Yet when the Sooners needed to make some plays, they made plays. They earned the win. Auburn forfeited the win by refusing to make it happen. It's a psychological hurdle and there's only one way to fix it — to carve out a win the next time a winning situation arises.
2. I do not blame Thorne for much at all Saturday.
Did the Auburn quarterback make a terrible choice throwing into underneath zone coverage and giving OU linebacker Kip Lewis a golden opportunity to become a hero?
He sure did. That pick six changed the game permanently.
With that said, what were your expectations for Thorne in the first place Saturday? He was demoted after a miserable performance against Cal and was subbed back into the QB1 role after Hank Brown lost his mind against Arkansas. If you were expecting greatness from Thorne against Oklahoma, well, that's a problem with your expectations more than anything Thorne did or didn't do.
Freeze got a ton of mileage out of Thorne. The senior finished 21-of-32 for 338 yards with three touchdowns and, yeah, one face-melting interception. He also escaped pressure by stepping up in the pocket far more often than usual, which allowed him to complete several throws that would have been sacks in previous games. He ran intelligently, protected the ball for the most part and competed vigorously.
Thorne did his job. He didn't do it perfectly, but he certainly wasn't alone in that manner.
The lack of running late in the game wasn't his fault. If the team is to run the football, then the play-caller knows exactly how to make that happen. Call run plays.
3. We saw a (slightly) different side of Freeze afterward.
I was aghast at some of Freeze's comments after the Arkansas loss. The "nine times" comment was mystifying. Him categorizing the Tigers' offensive plan as "beautiful" last Monday was a head-scratcher as well.
Does he even realize that he's throwing his players under the bus with that kind of rhetoric?
Yet he sounded different after the Oklahoma loss. He talked about wanting to hug Thorne and put him in better situations moving forward. He commended his players for their emotional investment in the game and talked about how the coaching staff — him included — needs to coach things better.
At least Freeze acknowledged his role in the whole thing, which is a step forward for him.
I know the losing is difficult for him. He was able to get Liberty up to speed relatively quickly before his arrival at Auburn and it's obvious that Freeze expected to follow a similar timeline on the Plains. That's slightly confusing to me because Freeze chose to extend the rebuild time here by focusing more on high-school recruits and less on established players from the transfer portal. He just loves developing players from clueless freshmen to savvy and well-school seniors, but college football no longer has that kind of attention span.
He's a relic. He knows he's a relic — and he's fine with that characterization because development is what drew him to coaching in the first place. The satisfaction of turning a youngster into a man is what keeps him engaged. He's from the days when coaches were thrilled to make $50,000 and took immense pride in keeping their home field fertilized and painted and cut just right.
Freeze has grown well beyond that, of course, but he's still that same guy in his head. We all are.
With that in mind, it's a big deal that he can make adjustments to how he views accountability after wins and losses. He's thinking about his situation more critically — and that could be the most important thing happening within this program right now.
TWO QUESTIONS
1. What is this team's ceiling?
I'm not particularly dissuaded by this team.
I expected the Tigers to be 4-1 at this stage, so things are behind schedule from my perspective. Now the Tigers must play three consecutive road games — at Georgia, at Missouri and at Kentucky. All three of those games are lose-able. Maybe two are at least potentially winnable? Or is it one? An 0-fer is a possibility as well.
It's really a Choose Your Own Adventure situation as far as that goes.
Bottom line: This team has a critical shortcoming in that it doesn't have an upper-half SEC quarterback on the roster. We know why. We know Freeze didn't particularly love his options in the portal — even ones that clearly would have made his team better — and he allowed himself to believe that he could fix Thorne's problems and turn him into something much better than he was a year ago.
That hasn't happened. Did anyone really believe that would happen? I feel like most informed Auburn fans were clamoring for Riley Leonard or Cam Ward or Grayson McCall or someone of that ilk. Just someone to at least challenge Thorne and make him better if not outright win the job and make Thorne a backup. It didn't happen.
If Thorne can just be the guy he was against Arkansas and Oklahoma (minus the egregious interception against the Sooners) I consider him "good enough" to win games. I mean, the defense is playing some terrific ball. D.J. Durkin has brought the juice Freeze so badly craved and the organization demanded.
In spite of the turnover problems of the recent past, the Tigers' offense nonetheless is ranked No. 23 nationally in yards per game and No. 42 in points per game. That's good enough to win some games.
I still think this team can go 6-6 with wins over Kentucky, Vanderbilt, ULM and Texas A&M. Is that an ambitious take? To some, it's insane. Yet I still see a decent, middle-of-the-road SEC team here. It's one that still doesn't understand how to win, sure, but it doesn't have to remain that way permanently. Nothing stays the same.
2. Can Freeze and his staff keep this recruiting class together?
I think they can keep most of it in tact, sure.
Most of these committed players understood that Auburn wasn't quite ready to be a contender. The coaching staff has been selling these players on the idea that they're the missing pieces, that they can band together and bring Auburn back to the heights it enjoyed a decade ago.
That idea really resonates with certain players. Others find it laughable and look for offers from more successful programs. That's fine. There are hundreds of players good enough to help the Tigers improve their standing within the SEC. It's up to this staff to find the players who want to be part of this renaissance and then MAKE SURE THEY STAY FOCUSED ON THAT VISION.
I think they've done a good job in that way. So, no, I don't think the class falls apart with a five- or six-win season. There is much left to do — opportunities to win games and turn heads and enhance its reputation as a trendy (fun) spot for recruits.
ONE FEARLESS PREDICTION
A win against Georgia? Not unless it's basketball season.
Auburn isn't a terrible football team. It's an OK football team with a mental block about losing that it doesn't even realize it has. The good news is that these things will work themselves out over time even without direct intervention — assuming I'm correct that the team isn't actually a smoldering dumpster fire.
So my prediction is this: Auburn will win a game during this October road swing. It almost certainly won't be in Athens, so that leaves Columbia or Lexington as the possibilities. In fact, I wonder if playing on the road against Mizzou and/or Kentucky won't actually relieve some pressure.
Everyone expected Auburn to play really well at home to open the season and, wow, that really didn't happen. Playing at home may actually make things worse for players and coach desperately trying to snap a Power-Four skid because you begin fearing another failure.
Road games? Anything good out there is gravy.
Can this team actually do it? I love the passion on the field. I think the coaching staff is hell-bent on proving themselves. I think the team has enough talent.
It's a good combination — just not for Georgia.
