It took 5 turnovers for Cal to beat Auburn by 7. It took 5 turnovers for Arkansas to beat Auburn by 10. It took 1 turnover for Oklahoma to beat Auburn by 6.
You could say Cal slightly outplayed Auburn. They outgained the Tigers, but the 5 turnovers is what did them in. Auburn was even at best against Arkansas. They gained over 400 yards on offense and had a few takeaways of their own, but yeah, 5 turnovers.
Auburn absolutely outplayed Oklahoma in pretty much ever facet of the game. You can blame the loss all on one pick six (that I internally played in my head right before it happened when I noticed Auburn was up 6 points), but there were 74 other plays run by Auburn that had something to do with it.
Auburn rushed for more yards, threw for more yards, played better defense… all of that against Oklahoma.
The Sooners had one deep ball, stuffed the Tigers on one goal-line stand, and had the pick six to take the lead. That’s it. There was nothing outside of those things that stood out or that you could pinpoint that was overall better than Auburn.
Auburn had 170+ more yards than the Sooners, FIFTEEN more 1st downs, less penalties, a 10+ minute time of possession advantage, ran almost 30 more plays, and converted more 3rd and 4th downs. What else can be blamed?
Missing the field goal before the half was massive. I get missing the rushed one. I do not get missing the 2nd, normal one. Not sure what was going on there. But being up 10 at the half really would’ve felt like the game was almost won.
You can put losses on any number of things. It’s not always the quarterback. It definitely wasn’t the quarterback this week. The pick six is blamed, but had Auburn not missed 2 field goals, the pick six wouldn’t have mattered. For the record, I’m not just putting this all on the kicker. The point is that there are plays all over the field that contribute to losing a game.
Weirdly, I just can’t figure out how Auburn lost this one. And I’m not going to try. All I know is that it’s getting better. The loss hurt more because you know it’s better. Turnovers were close to being 0, but 1 was enough to overturn a near statistical beat down.
Something will change. The universe can’t do it much longer. I told you the law of averages wouldn’t allow Auburn to have 5 turnovers, and it didn’t. But the universe is testing us all.
I don’t know what else to think about it. I just know Georgia is next.
