There’s not much to say until Auburn wins another game. The glaring negatives that had plagued Auburn’s winnable losses over the last month were not there in Athens. Despite their slight struggles over the season, Georgia has a more founded team. They should be better than Auburn right now.
Some are arguing that Auburn should run the ball more. Maybe they should. Maybe we’ve actually seen the line get dismantled for most of the season and Jarquez and Co. get stuffed. “Run the bawl” is a very easy, simple argument. It doesn’t always work. And most of the time it hasn’t.
Those that don’t have any interceptions to complain about are arguing about taking sacks. Let’s go back to that offensive line. When one guy completely whiffs on blocks as if he had no idea that he was supposed to do something, who are we supposed to blame? The quarterback that is easiest to go after or the group meant to give that quarterback (or any quarterback) five seconds to look down field against Georgia?
Next on the list of “something to complain about because there were no interceptions” is one 4th down play where Hugh yelled at Thorne when he got to the sideline. Nobody will ever know exactly who audibled, didn’t, checked, or whatever. Hugh got mad because a play didn’t work. Somebody said Payton checked out of something. He said he didn’t. Connor Lew said it was a line miscommunication.
Whatever it was, a midfield 4th and 1 conversion doesn’t change an 18 point loss. It could make it closer, it could’ve turned the game. It also could have not.
I’d say the miracle catch right before halftime when Auburn should’ve been able to run out the clock and go to halftime down 7-3 was the deciding point of the game.
At the end of the day, it ended up being a game where the better team slowly pulled away at home. Auburn didn’t do anything awful. Georgia didn’t do anything great. They are down for recent Georgia and Auburn played one of the more normal, complete games of the season. And they did so against one of the 2 best teams they’ll play all season.
Now it’s a bye week. Auburn needs to rest and regroup. We need to rest and regroup. The Iron Bowl is the toughest game left and there are 5 games before that to get things better. We’ve seen things get better the last 2-3 weeks. Now it’s time to get some wins to show up at the end of the day.
