Auburn appeared destined for its first College Football Playoff berth late last season after defeating two No. 1 teams in November. Despite losing two games in the regular season, there’s little doubt the Tigers would have become the first team to have multiple losses and still make the four-game Playoff due to the fact no team was hotter in all of college football by the end of the regular season.

Of course, that was before Auburn met Georgia for the second time last season, this second time coming in Atlanta and away from Jordan-Hare.

Entering the 2017 SEC Championship Game, Jarrett Stidham was on a complete tear. Auburn’s signal-caller was completing his passes at a remarkable 73.4 percent over the previous four games with an eight to one touchdown to interception ratio. He threw for over 200 yards in each game, and the Tigers were never threatened despite playing two top-ranked opponents.

That hot streak failed to continue against Georgia and Stidham threw two costly interceptions in the Peach Bowl in Auburn’s embarrassing loss to UCF. The Tigers went away from the run in the bowl game and left it up to Stidham to deliver a win; something he obviously failed to manufacture.

If you believe the comments from an anonymous coach that spoke to Sports Illustrated, the reason being – teams began to figure Stidham out. According to the unnamed coach, Stidham is affected by the pass rush and tends to lose concentration when pressured. Here’s what the coach had to say in regards to Stidham:

There’s still a lot to be desired with quarterback Jarrett Stidham. Facing a rush, his eyes come down: He gets nervous because he doesn’t want to get hit. If you’re bringing pressure—or even if you act like you are—he’s going to see it and it’s going to affect him. People caught onto that at the end of the year. In its Peach Bowl win, UCF did a great job of pressuring him.

Is it fair to say teams “caught onto” Stidham when he had such a hot November? If that’s accurate, you have to wonder why Alabama didn’t catch on to this weakness. It should also be noted that Stidham was injured and had to have offseason surgery to his non-throwing shoulder, which likely affected his performance late in the season.

We’ll find out soon enough if these comments hold true, as Washington and LSU are certainly going to test this theory early in the season with the Tigers breaking in four new faces on the offensive line.