SEC Football: Auburn might go winless in the SEC

Predictions of a horrible season for the Auburn Tigers abound, and not just from Alabama football fans. Even the Tigers’ fan site, Auburn Wire is predicting a six-win season. That six-win threshold is pretty consistent with national media including Athlon and College Football News.

Six wins are not likely to save Bryan Harsin’s job. Seven wins probably will not either.

Harsin is not alone in facing a season of bleakness. The Aubie nation might have to live through a season with no SEC wins.

According to the War Eagle Reader, the Tigers have gone winless in the SEC only three times. The most recent winless SEC season was 0-6 in 1980. The others were 0-7 in 1950 and 1952.

Could it happen again in 2022? My take is no, thanks to a home date with Missouri on the last Saturday of September. An Auburn win should push their season record at that point to 3-1.

The limit to optimism on the Auburn Wire site is two SEC wins – Missouri and an upset of Mississippi State in Starkville. The same source predicts an Auburn win over Penn State, along with Auburn victories over Mercer, San Jose State, Missouri and Western Kentucky.

Auburn’s defense will be far better than its offense. But the offense will be so bad, the Tigers will not be able to out-score any potent SEC offense. That does not bode well for an upset of Mississippi State.

Questions must be circulating among Auburn boosters about when to cut Bryan Harsin loose. Even with a large buyout, a loss to Missouri might become the tipping point. With a Missouri win, Harsin might make it until the end of the season, but another termination point could be reached at 1-4 in SEC play following a home loss to Arkansas.

SEC Football Cellar

What should concern Auburn fans the most is whether the program’s demise into the SEC football cellar can be turned around quickly by a new coach. Thanks to Vanderbilt and maybe Missouri, Auburn will not be the worst SEC football team in 2022, but it will not be far from the bottom.

The blame should go back to Gus Malzahn. Malzahn built a reputation based on a gimmicky offense that stretched playing rules with linemen downfield and used fast pace to create some memorable wins. He did not turn that success into a program with a solid foundation. Auburn should have moved on from Malzahn after his teams lost a total of 11 games in the 2015 and 2016 seasons.

Note: Based on Sports Reference records, Auburn was also winless in the SEC during the 1941, 1944 and 1948 seasons.