As head coach Jimbo Fisher prepares his team for a noon Saturday game at Auburn, it shouldn’t be too difficult to figure out the opponent.

Texas A&M will meet the Tigers at Jordan-Hare Stadium in the final game of a brutal 3-game road stretch that started out just fine but met with some strong resistance last Saturday in Starkville. Both teams have identical 5-3 records. Both probably believe it should be better than that, and with good reason.

Both teams have underachieved in 2018 based on expectations coming into the season, and oddly enough for very similar reasons. In fact, held up side by side, it is striking just how much these two teams are alike.

Fast starts a distant memory now

Auburn is coming off a SEC West title and a conference championship appearance. The Tigers roared into the 2018 season with a very impressive 21-16 victory over a Washington team that was highly-regarded at the time. But a disappointing loss to LSU and back-to-back SEC debacles to Mississippi State and Tennessee have raised some serious questions.

Texas A&M ushered in a new era with Fisher and in just the second game at the helm came within a field goal of shocking No. 2 Clemson. Three consecutive SEC victories gave Aggieland hope that things had turned around ahead of schedule. But the recent trend of late-season failures bubbled back to the top with last Saturday’s road loss in Starkville.

Underperforming QBs

After throwing for 3,000 yards last season, Auburn QB Jarrett Stidham was poised to challenge Missouri QB Drew Lock for top honors in 2018. But that hasn’t been the case. After eight games, Stidham is struggling to reach the 2,000-yard mark and heading into Saturday’s game ranks no better than sixth in the conference with 1,714 passing yards. His QB rating to date is 129.53, well under last year’s 151.

Kellen Mond can sympathize. After throwing for 430 yards against Clemson, it appeared that Fisher, a.k.a the “quarterback whisperer,” had worked his magic. But it took Mond more than two games to accumulate that same number and the sophomore has thrown for more than 235 yards just one time since the Clemson game (353 vs. South Carolina).

Diminishing running game

Inconsistent offensive line play and injuries have hampered both teams rushing attack, although Auburn was able to get “healthy” against Ole Miss, the conference’s worst run defense. However, against run defenses with a pulse, Auburn struggled, failing to break 100 yards in three consecutive games. Even with the 269 rushing yards racked up against the Rebels, Auburn still ranks just 11th in the SEC averaging 172.25 yards per game on the ground.

For the Aggies, the run game has mysteriously vanished since pounding out 503 yards on the ground in the season opener with Northwestern State. Since rushing for 176 yards against Arkansas, the Aggies have managed 164, 105, and 61 in the successive games leading up to Saturday.

What Saturday’s game means

Both teams are equally desperate for a victory. The loser is fully aware that they are in deep trouble. For Texas A&M it would cement the notion that late-season collapses will continue to be the norm until Fisher can fully place his stamp on the program.

For Auburn and head coach Gus Malzahn, the situation is much more dire. With road games at Georgia and Alabama still left on the schedule, the Tigers would be 5-4 with a loss on Saturday with a real prospect of finishing the season with a losing record. Auburn has fired the past three coaches with losing records that weren’t in that coach’s first season.

It might not look like it next to marquee games like Alabama vs. LSU, and Kentucky vs. Georgia, but Saturday’s game is a very big one for these two programs.