Auburn lands in 'Misery Index' after embarrassing home loss
Auburn has made the “Misery Index” after its embarrassing home loss to New Mexico State on Saturday.
Each week, USA Today’s Dan Wolken breaks down which teams had the most miserable week in college football. On Sunday, Wolken included the Tigers on his list.
Auburn dropped the game, which it paid New Mexico State $1.85 million to play in, 31-10 in front of a home crowd. There was nothing pretty about the loss, and Wolken broke down the painful game on Sunday.
He said that while Auburn should have won the game, many of the Tigers’ issues are leftover from the Bryan Harsin era.
“There are a lot of things about the current state of Auburn football that Hugh Freeze could reasonably blame on his predecessor,” Wolken wrote. “Bryan Harsin just didn’t understand the job and didn’t do it very well, particularly when it came to talent acquisition in the SEC. Losing to New Mexico State in arguably the worst Auburn performance in decades, however, is 100% on Freeze.
He gave New Mexico State credit, though. The Aggies have been a good team this season and just outplayed the Tigers.
“New Mexico State is a good Conference USA team with an excellent coach in Jerry Kill, but when a program like Auburn loses to a program like that, it’s a calamity,” he wrote. “And Auburn didn’t just lose, it got walloped 31-10 at home in a game that certainly didn’t seem like a fluke. Auburn didn’t turn it over and didn’t have an unusual amount of penalties. It just couldn’t run the ball (2.5 yards per rush), didn’t protect quarterback Payton Thorne very well and never made any impact on the New Mexico State defense.”
Overall, Wolken has not been impressed with Freeze’s first season at the helm at Auburn.
“Auburn’s had enough bad teams on its schedule to eke out bowl eligibility at 6-5, but this has been a highly unimpressive debut season for a coach with a pretty good track record of instant success in his previous stops,” Wolken wrote.
No coach can win without a QB, especially the right QB. AU had not QBs on the roster worth mentioning, and Freeze could not get one of the good ones in the portal. Freeze will get AU to at least the kind of team you dread playing.
Agreed. My takeaway from this loss is how bad are the MSU and Arkansas defenses?
I have been around for a little while and have watched dozens of Iron Bowls. I have learned that the records are not a complete indicator on how the game will go. Ahead of this game, I will be very surprised if Auburn wins this year. I am sure I am not alone in this line of thinking.
Hugh Freezes body of work is good but the bottom line is this was a completely unacceptable loss. They were/are looking ahead to Bama which is on the coaches.
I was at the game and this is in the ridiculous category.