After their Brandon Harris-led offensive explosion a week ago, there was reason for optimism for the previously inept offense. Harris showed arm talent and accuracy against New Mexico State, which can obviously be fools gold, but the way he was throwing on the move and finding receivers when given the opportunity made it look like LSU would have some juice.

They fell flat against Auburn, looking much like the team that struggled at the start of their win over Louisiana-Monroe and no-showed against Mississippi State. Of LSU’s first six drives of the night, five of them were three-and-outs, and they all featured runs stuffed before they could get going and missed throws. Even though things had changed with the personnel, the results came back the same.

The one drive in the first half that didn’t end poorly was a 75-yard touchdown drive, which was fueled by one long completion from Harris, rolling to his right, all the way down to the 1-yard line to Malachi Dupre. While the connection between Harris and Dupre is encouraging, the Tigers once again could get nothing going consistently to move the ball.

In all, LSU had 6 first downs in the first half, went 1-for-7 on third down and put up just 170 total yards, compared to Auburn’s 379 yards. Harris was 3-for-11 for 58 yards.

The defense was porous from front to back, but Auburn has been putting up huge offensive totals for years and LSU’s defense is weak in all the wrong places to stop Auburn. The hope was that the Tigers would be able to get at least a few stops for the offense to keep up.

Neither of those happened, and Auburn buried LSU early, taking a 31-7 lead into the half. Harris will have to find some magic to bring them back from the dead in this one.