beAU Knows: hAUlf Empty or hAUlf Full?

I don’t think there’s any great way of sugar coating what happened Saturday night. I’ve gone back and forth between being happy we won far from home and being extremely worried. Somewhere around 1:00 AM Sunday morning all I could think about was last year’s games against San Jose State and Missouri and how eerily similar this win felt. I kept preaching patience after the San Jose State win. I kept preaching “a win is a win” after Missouri hand wrapped us that win. After watching another win that should have OBVIOUSLY been a loss, how can I expect people to listen to me preach again? How can this Auburn team be trusted after such an awful looking performance? Oh yeah, logic.

First off, all of you dimwits that thought our defense was doomed after the UMass opening drive, how are you feeling now? Pretty stupid, I suppose. It’s almost like you learn football from Twitter. I’m sorry, from X app. Some accounts with a ton of followers tweet something about being worried about our defense and it turns into “Auburn’s defense sucks and we all know it” somehow. I told you not to panic, and here we are. Keep up with that garbage and I’ll send Eugene Asante all of your names and home addresses.

Alright, now let’s address the elephant in the room. I’m not sure what happened on that interception on the first possession. To me it looked like Payton Thorne was just trying to flip the ball out of bounds and his arm was hit causing it to go directly to the defender. Yes, we were extremely lucky it wasn’t returned for a touchdown, but weren’t we equally unlucky that it was intercepted in the first place?

It’s like some of you are really quick to see things only one way. Anyways, you could just tell Thorne was rattled by that for most of the game afterward. Am I making excuses for him? Absolutely not. You can’t be the starting quarterback and have that pouty, lost puppy look on your face when bad things happen. I saw it, Hugh Freeze saw it, it simply can’t happen again.

Freeze knew we needed a spark, so he ran Robby out there where things unsurprisingly didn’t get any better. I think we saw a kid grow up on that final touchdown drive and I don’t think we’ll see that weakness again the rest of the season from QB1.

Even with the deficiencies from the passing game, the “strength of our team” at the running back position had two extremely untimely fumbles. No, there is never a timely turnover, but these two were right in the middle of two successful drives where we actually had some momentum. Two of our most successful drives right when get confidence and establish some rhythm end in fumbles from arguably our two best offensive players.

If we don’t turn the ball over in those situations Auburn wins this one in a going away fashion. That doesn’t fit the narrative for some of you, and I don’t really care. It was just one of those weird nights, guys.

I don’t want to harp on Saturday anymore. We all saw it and depending on whether you are a glass half empty or glass half full kind of person is how you’ll remember this game. My hats off to a team that travels 2.000+ miles, starts a football game around the time they are usually winding down to go to bed, and still gets a Power 5 win. There’s all sorts of studies on cortisol levels and melatonin levels preparing your body for sleep at a certain time of night but I’m not going to take you down that rabbit hole.

Arkansas was up 14-6 at halftime over Kent State at home and won 28-6. Kentucky was tied 7-7 with Eastern Kentucky at home and won 28-17. Tennessee was up 13-6 at halftime over Austin Peay at home and won 30-13. Auburn beat a Pac-12 opponent all the way across the country at midnight and dumbass fans are in shambles. Be better idiots.

I’m not oblivious. This isn’t sunshine and I’m not a sunshine pumper. I’m looking forward to seeing marked improvement on the offensive side of the ball this weekend against Samford. I want to see Thorne throw accurate balls and make the correct reads. I want to see these wide receivers actually create some separation because they have not up to this point. That’s another reason Thorne has looked bad, but I’ll save that rant for another day.

I want to see a good push up front and for our backs to look explosive and hold on to the damn football. We have a lot to improve on, but it is all fixable. I want to see it fixed Saturday before SEC play. Let’s enjoy this fun one before it turns into all-out war the next week. War Eagle Forever.