A defense is playing its guts out for a scoreless 15 minutes against the No. 2 team in the nation, and the coach calls for a fake punt on 4th-and-6 from his own 34-yard line. It’s pretty much a given that if the play doesn’t work the highly ranked opponent points.

It’s momentum-shifting if not successful. And on Saturday in Athens, Ga., it wasn’t. Auburn tried the trick play and failed. It set Georgia in motion to take charge of the game. The Bulldogs went on to thump the Tigers, 42-10.

Within minutes of John Samuel Shenker coming up 4 yards short of a first down, Auburn was down 14-0 and the game was never in doubt after that. Tigers coach Bryan Harsin lost the game before it really ever got started. He did not put Auburn in position to be successful. There’s a difference between taking a calculated risk and winging it out of desperation.

This screamed desperation. A desperate coach desperately trying to hold on to his job. Harsin insists he doesn’t think about that. He maintains that his entire focus is preparing his team to make it better. Maybe he’s trying to convince himself he doesn’t sit on the hottest seat in college football.

He isn’t fooling anyone else, certainly not Georgia. After making the stop the Bulldogs rolled past a disheartened defense for the initial touchdown of the game. The Auburn defense had kept the Dawgs out of the end zone to that point, and perhaps could have continued that trend if Harsin went with a punt and forced Georgia to march 60-plus yards. They hadn’t threatened to that point. Nobody will ever know now.

What is clear is that Harsin’s decision cost Auburn dearly. It shifted the momentum and the Tigers, with inexperienced quarterback Robby Ashford struggling to move the team against a superior defense, never took it back again.

Would the Bulldogs have won anyway? Yeah, probably. Did the failure take away any hope of competing in the final 3 quarters? Yes.

The Tigers are now 3-3, and 1-2 in the Southeastern Conference. It’s the midway point of 2022, and a visit to Oxford, Miss., is on the horizon. Auburn will be a decisive underdog to Mississippi and faces the prospect of being on the wrong side of a .500 record for the first time this season.

Then it’s the bye week. That’s when changes are often made. If a move is to be made before the end of the season, it’s an opportune time.

Whether or not Harsin makes it to the end of the schedule, the Tigers are teetering on the brink of bowl eligibility. Aside from the Ole Miss game, Auburn still faces challenges from Arkansas, Mississippi State, Texas A&M and Alabama. Even with a defeat of Western Kentucky, the only non-conference opponent left on the slate, the Tigers would have to come up with at least 2 more Ws to keep its postseason streak alive.

Auburn has played in 9 consecutive bowls. The Tigers qualified for the postseason in 12 of the past 13 seasons and 20 of the past 22.

What happened after those 2 seasons when Auburn failed to play in a bowl game? The head coach was fired both times.

After 10 seasons at Auburn, Tommy Tuberville went 5-7 in 2008 and was dismissed. After 4 seasons on the Plains, one of which produced the 2010 national championship, Gene Chizik went 3-9 in 2012 and was let go.

In Harsin’s first season at Auburn, the Tigers squeezed by with a 6-6 record and a 2021 Birmingham Bowl berth, a game they lost to American Athletic Conference foe Houston. Will Harsin even make it to the end of 2022 to see if he can guide the Tigers to the postseason?