The Auburn Tigers have an opportunity to turn their season around and secure a signature win on Saturday, when top-ranked Georgia hosts the Tigers in Athens. Since 2020, Auburn has played 32 games against ranked opponents. They have only won four of them. Head coach Alex Golesh is excited for the opportunity that lies ahead for his team.
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“This is why you come to this league. This is why you come to Auburn. This is why you coach at Auburn. It’s opportunities like this to go play a big time program on a big time stage,” Golesh said.
One thing that has plagued the Tigers this year is the inability to get off to a good start, or even a decent start. Auburn is only averaging 3.25 points in the first quarter against power four competition this season. That must change if the trajectory of this team is going to change. Golesh and offensive coordinator Joel Gordon took time in the bye week to reassess what has been causing some of these issues.
“Where we’re falling short is just break downs. There’s not enough consistency from one play to the next regardless of scheme and execution. I think what you’ve seen consistently the whole season is when we are able to execute enough, whatever it is, on first down or second down to get a drive started, we’ve had a chance to be a pretty good offense,” Gordon said.
Golesh had this to say on the subject, “We’ve always done an elite job from an in-game adjustments standpoint. In the sense of this is how they’re attacking us, this is where we go, I feel like we’ve done an elite job with that. Can we get to that even earlier in our game plan process? To where early on in the game, you feel like you are on the right things to be able and go create efficient runs.”
Sanford Stadium has not been kind to the Tigers, to say the least. They have lost the last nine meetings in Athens. It will be another tough road environment for quarterback Byrum Brown and this offense. Both coaches spoke about trying to improve so the mistakes that were made in Knoxville against Tennessee do not show up again this weekend.
“What has to happen is you learn from those experiences. As a unit, we’ve got to take the field and have confidence that what we’ve been practicing is going to get executed,” Gordon said.
Golesh said, “You can amplify the noise all you want, it’s still really hard to replicate the environment that it is. I think that comes with experience. The part I was most disappointed with is that the guys that were continuously costing us in those situations had the experience.”
Overall, Auburn has not posted a win in the Deep South’s Oldest Rivalry since 2017, a 40-17 throttling by Gus Malzahn’s Tigers over #1 ranked Georgia in Kirby Smart’s second season. Georgia’s current nine straight wins in the series is the most by either team in this storied rivalry that goes all the way back to 1892. Auburn hopes to put an end to that at 2:30 p.m. central on Saturday.
Auburn Undercover is an independent Auburn sports media company covering Auburn athletics, recruiting and insider news.
