Auburn played a football game. Can you believe it? At first it looked like they hadn’t played in three weeks because they hadn’t played in three weeks. Wait. I forgot I was doing these reviews in bullet point style this year…
- The game felt a little more serious with it being at night, but it still had that late SEC Network game featuring South Carolina and Vanderbilt with a half empty stadium.
- The new lights were on display and they were fun. If you weren’t there, don’t say anything. If you were there, and had something less than “I don’t care” about it, then you just want to be mad at something. It’s some lights, man.
- The fake crowd noise kills me. You probably can’t hear it on the TV. But it’s constant and distracting. I always think there’s a fight up by the scoreboard or something. Sometimes it’s okay for it be a little quiet.
- The Auburn defense got to the quarterback early, despite a bunch of underneath routes, but it was those deadly draws that killed them.
- After the first quarter, the Tennessee passing game was mostly shutdown. It was that up-the-gut running game that gashed the Auburn defense. That said, they only gave up 17 points, and seven of those were a late, trash touchdown.
- The Auburn offense wasn’t bad at any point of the game really. It was a tad shaky at first, but they still moved the ball.
- Once the top was taken off by that long Shwartz-bomb, it opened it all up. Tennessee started to look like Tennessee.
- Tank being out didn’t really hurt. It could hurt in other games. But the line blocked well enough, and Shivers runs harder than anybody I’ve ever seen.
- It was good for DJ Williams to finally break away a few times. He’s constantly tripped up.
- Bo Nix’s interception was a gunslinger decision. He could’ve easily run for a 1st down and there was another receiver wide open. He was making the tough pass that would’ve been awesome.
- Auburn loves to return interceptions for 100 yards.
- I thought Seth Williams had broken his ankle on his awesome catch, bobble catch that would’ve been a catch had he been in bounds.
- Fans around me were irate about that call, but it was unfortunately the right call. He lost possession after landing, and he landed out of bounds. So at that point it didn’t matter that he caught it again. Again, if all of this happened in the middle of the field, it was a catch.
- The Tennessee defense looked like they knew what was coming the whole time. With every shift, they were doing all kinds of hand signals. It reminded me of 2018 where apparently Pruitt knew everything that was coming. It didn’t work that well this time.
- The Iron Bowl is next. The performance in this game will matter exactly 0%. But really, we need to get Tank, Brodarious, and Alec back.
