Preseason optimism replaced by reality for Auburn, other SEC teams

A new college football season always brings with it optimism. It's the beauty of the sport - as bad as your season was, there's always next year. It's different every year. For the Auburn Tigers, after a home loss to Arkansas on Saturday to drop to 2-2, it's starting to feel like Groundhog's Day.

The preseason was filled with hope on the Plains. Hope that a good recruiting class would provide a spark in year two under Hugh Freeze, and last season, and the year before that, and the year before that, and the year before that would be a distant memory; a necessary evil to get the Tigers to this new era of Auburn football where they would get back to being a serious SEC contender.

Hope that all Payton Thorne needed to improve was a better group of receivers and another offseason in Freeze's system. The receivers are talented, but the quarterback situation is still bad. Thorne got benched following Auburn's first loss of the season at home to Cal in Week 2.

You can fool yourself into thinking that one loss isn't the end of the world, and for fans of teams with mediocre signal-callers, there's never a more popular player than the backup quarterback. Redshirt freshman Hank Brown started last week and played well against a team heavily overmatched in New Mexico. His performance let Aubun fans believe for one more week.

In his first start against an SEC opponent, Brown threw three interceptions in the first half and was sent to the bench in favor of the guy he replaced last week. And now, Auburn is staring at the reality of a fourth straight losing season, and a fifth straight year with six or less wins.

Auburn fired Gus Malzhan following the 2020 season, a coach who had gone 68-35 over eight years, beat Alabama three times, and won the SEC West twice, culminating in an SEC Title in 2013. A solid run of success for a traditionally mid-tier SEC program. But delusions of grandeur, and big brother to the West's dominance, forced Auburn to move on.

Bryan Harsin was a disaster of a hire, let go after going 11-14 in two years. Freeze was thought to be a savior, but he's on a Harsin-like pace with an 8-9 record through his first 17 games.

Auburn needed a good start. Something to sell to recruits beyond blank checks written by a guy with a big yellow hat. The Tigers were dealt a favorable hand for that, with five consecutive home games to set up momentum.

Instead, another home loss next week to Oklahoma will make getting to a bowl game, once figured a foregone conclusion, a murky process. The Tigers spent the month of October on the road, playing Georgia, Kentucky, and Missouri. They have one buy-game left, and home games against Vanderbilt and Texas A&M before going to Tuscaloosa for the Iron Bowl. The annual postseason trip to Birmingham has never felt further away.

Hugh Freeze isn't on the hot seat, but a second straight losing season would turn the heat up on the Plains entering year three. And would likely have a negative impact on Auburn's 2025 class, no matter how big the checks.

Florida pulled off a must-win on the road at Mississippi State, but the Gators still feel unlikely to get more than four or five wins. Like Auburn, Florida probably wishes they had a do-over with a coaching decision. Dan Mullen was let go following one bad season that directly followed three pretty good ones where the Gators played in New Year's Six bowl games and finished in the Top 13.

Billy Napier has back-to-back losing seasons and barring multiple upsets will have a third, unlikely to be given a chance at a fourth.

Mississippi State pulled the trigger on Zach Arnett after 10 games as the full-time head coach, terrified of falling any further down the SEC hiearchy. The Bulldogs look worse under first-year head coach Jeff Lebby than they have since the end of Sylvester Croom's tenure.

Programs are looking for quick fixes in the age of NIL and the transfer portal. You can rebuild a roster almost overnight, but the best teams are still the ones who build the majority of their programs from the ground-up of the high school ranks and develop young talent.

But coaches are given less time than ever to build. And the impatience of the big money donors leads to any sense of moral responsibility in hiring practices to be totally ignored. If you can win football games, and quickly, nothing else matters. If you can't, we'll find somebody who will. Or at least try, try, and try again.

It's Groundhog's Day for Auburn and others destined to repeat the same cycle again, hoping for a different result.