After Auburn’s season opener, I suggested something that might’ve seemed a bit premature.

I was tasked with the question that many fans wonder after the first weekend of the season, in which preseason aspirations are seemingly crushed with one lackluster performance.

Which SEC coach will be the first to get fired in 2017?

I threw out all the expected names. Kevin Sumlin and Butch Jones made the list, as did Jim McElwain coming off the Michigan beatdown. But I threw one wild card in there just because I saw a path in which it could happen.

That coach was Gus Malzahn.

Why would Malzahn be a candidate as the coach of the No. 13 team in the country coming off a 34-point win in the opener? With Jarrett Stidham, Kamryn Pettway to go along with that dominant defense, wasn’t Auburn the team that was supposed to challenge Alabama in the SEC West?

Well, therein lies the problem.

What happened if Auburn didn’t meet those high preseason expectations? What if the Stidham experiment didn’t work out and Malzahn couldn’t win big games with another talented quarterback?

There’s a path for Malzahn to wear out his welcome at Auburn, and it starts this weekend.

Credit: John Reed-USA TODAY Sports

We spend a lot of time talking about “must-win games.” I think the more appropriate term is “can’t-lose games.” That’s the case for Auburn this weekend at Missouri.

Missouri is fresh off an ugly showing at home vs. Purdue in which it cemented its spot as the SEC’s worst team. The Tigers rank 112th in scoring defense and look like a complete train wreck.

That would make it all the more humiliating if Auburn struggled.

If Malzahn’s offense can’t move the ball downfield in Columbia, it’ll send up even more red flags than that disastrous showing at Clemson. Poor offensive line play is a great equalizer. If Stidham spends most of the day on his back and Auburn doesn’t dominate, Malzahn’s doubters will multiply.

There are already plenty of them. After all, the passing game looked limited against the likes of Georgia Southern and Mercer. Stidham still hasn’t been able to showcase his big arm and he’s been asked to run the ball a lot more than he’s used to. If he continues to struggle, a lot of that comes back to Malzahn.

Stidham can undoubtedly get better and improve in this offense, which I think he will. But the biggest reason to question Auburn’s long-term outlook is the offensive line play.

Let’s look ahead to some of Auburn’s matchups:

  • vs. Mississippi State
  • at LSU
  • vs. Georgia
  • vs. Alabama

Those four defensive lines will dismantle Auburn if that unit doesn’t improve. If Auburn avoids complete embarrassment against Missouri, it still has three bad matchups on paper before the Alabama game.

There’s a very realistic chance that the Tigers end up winning eight regular-season games and finishing third in the West. In all likelihood, it’ll be the defense doing the heavy lifting to get to that mark.

Would that really be enough to keep Malzahn around?

After all, Auburn could be looking at four consecutive years in which it didn’t …

  • Finish ranked inside the Associated Press top 20
  • Win the division
  • Beat Alabama
  • Reach nine wins

Sure, Malzahn got Auburn to a national championship in 2013, but that didn’t save Gene Chizik when his Cam Newton-less team was winless in SEC play two years later. It didn’t stop Auburn from paying Chizik’s buyout $7.5 million buyout, either. Besides, that 2013 team was still loaded with Chizik’s players.

As one of Malzahn’s players, Stidham was supposed take the offense to the next level. It’s early, but that certainly hasn’t happened so far. If Stidham looks more like Jeremy Johnson than Nick Marshall, it’s going to come back to bite Malzahn. The longer Stidham fails to meet ridiculous preseason expectations, the longer that cloud follows Malzahn.

How does he escape it? By starting 3-0 in SEC play against what once looked like a very favorable start to the conference slate. Now, that home matchup vs. MSU looks that much more daunting, and 60 minutes against Shea Patterson and the high-powered Ole Miss offense won’t be a picnic, either.

The reality is that Auburn must look significantly better in its next three games than it did in its first three games. If it doesn’t, a 1-2 start to SEC could easily be the result. It’s obviously in Malzahn’s best interest to avoid that, as is suffering multiple September losses for the third straight year.

Saturday is absolutely a “can’t-lose game” for Malzahn. That is, unless he wants to be firmly on the hot seat for the rest of 2017.