Auburn’s 17-13 loss to Houston in the Birmingham Bowl on Tuesday culminated a disappointing end to the 1st year of the Bryan Harsin era.

The Tigers finished 6-7 on the season, losing their final 5 games.

Needless to say, Auburn fans have a bad taste in their mouths following the late-season slide. But according to former Alabama quarterback Greg McElroy, it’s way too early to give up and Harsin and the program at this point

“I’m not going to try to sit here and say that Auburn’s going 12-0 next year,” said McElroy on the “McElroy and Cubelic in the Morning” radio show Wednesday. “I’m not going to sit here and say that Auburn’s going to win the national championship 2 years from now.

“But is it not true that things take time? Is it not true that it takes in some cases years to build a culture and a foundation? … I want to remind everyone that it takes time to build a culture. This is not a microwave situation.”

McElroy then proceeded to take the show’s listeners back to Nick Saban’s first season at Alabama, which looked a lot like Auburn’s 2021 campaign.

“I’m going to remind everyone about what it looked like in Tuscaloosa back in 2007,” McElroy said. “I was on the team. I want you to look at what our season looked like that year. You’re going to be a little bit shocked at the parallels.

“The last time I checked, when Nick Saban came into town, we had some bad actors. We had subpar talent in some places. … We came out of the gate really nicely that season, had some wins that people didn’t expect us to have. And then the wheels came off in the month of November for us. We lost 4 consecutive games and now we’re staring at 6-6. Does that sound familiar? Just curious.”

Can the Tigers turn things around the way Alabama did after the 2007 season?

Only time will tell.