Auburn signed zero scholarship players on National Signing Day.

That's a provable statement. It happened. There was no fax at 7 a.m. local time, nobody was on flip watch, there wasn't a single surprise involving Auburn. Coach Bryan Harsin didn't hold a press conference; he had nothing to discuss.

It was a day completely devoid of recruiting news.

The reality is that Auburn going 0-fer on NSD wasn't the strangest news of the past week. Harsin also bid adieu to offensive coordinator Austin Davis after an awkward 10 days with boots on the ground. Defensive coordinator Derek Mason bounced for Oklahoma State after telling his Auburn players that he wasn't taking another job.

One of the team's last remaining veterans at wideout, Ja'Varrius Johnson, hit the transfer portal Tuesday. In so doing, Johnson became the 18th scholarship player to announce plans to leave the Tigers' program.

Things are not going well.

Auburn doesn't deal with football calamity well. When a warning sign presents itself, the gears begin a gradual grind toward action. When multiple warning signs are presented, well, those gears hum with remarkable force and sound. They power a machine that serially plots a better future by using blueprints of the past. To some ears, that sounds like a perfect partnership that eventually will lead Auburn Football back to 1983.

The Tigers were tough as hell back then. They won a lot, too, and their method featured a bruising ground game and a defense that created turnovers, bloody noses and heartbreak across the Southeast. It's tempting to think that kind of program can be re-created, but that can't happen until Auburn finds its next Pat Dye.

The former coach was as old-school as they come — a man who loved ball, who knew how to talk with people of all kinds, who understood the value of politicking. College football was different back then. Dye made every Auburn person feel like they were part of his teams long before social media. Despite being from middle Georgia, Dye embodied the Auburn ethos with his country twang, his no-nonsense delivery, his passion for the game and his players and his program. He wasn't a mercenary. He wasn't here for a paycheck.

He believed in Auburn. And he loved it very much.

That brings us to Wednesday. Harsin, who grew up in Idaho and rose to fame coaching in Idaho, feels like a mercenary from a far-away place. He doesn't have a twang. He is philosophically opposed to politicking. His first Auburn team wasn't particularly tough and wasn't particularly good.

To the people who long for Dye, Harsin is impossible to take.

To the people who long for Dye, Harsin is not up to the job.

Dissent is nothing new in college athletics, but Auburn is the undisputed king of passive-aggressive dissent. Tommy Tuberville was undermined and ultimately jettisoned. Gene Chizik dug his own proverbial grave, but Gus Malzahn never gained much acceptance because he never fit the mold.

Harsin also doesn't fit the mold. And like his most recent predecessors, he's facing much resistance. The people who long for Dye wanted Mario Cristobal or Kevin Steele from the outset, so they're still annoyed by the fact that neither of those guys is coaching at Auburn right now.

So the resistance grows. The gears are humming. The machine is aglow.

This story isn't over, though. Bad news surrounds Harsin, but the upside is that he can see, very clearly, what must improve. He must stop the transfer-portal bleed. He must get out more and talk more often with more players, more coaches, more parents and make them all more aware of what he's aiming to accomplish at Auburn. He must find a way to land commitments from impactful, in-state Class of 2023 players.

Nick Saban is a household name in this part of the country. Same for Kirby Smart. Same for Jimbo Fisher. That's the threshold. That's where Harsin must be.

Give the detractors a tangible sign that Auburn can and will make up ground.

Some minds already are made up and they won't be changing. They've been plotting a change and will continue elaborating the plot. Harsin must rally the others. He must make it a point to rally the others. People aren't sure that Harsin is hell-bent on catching Alabama and Georgia. Make them know.

Succeeding against the best of the SEC West requires coordination and support from a variety of sources. Football isn't really about football anymore. It's about money and relationships and perceived momentum and social-media capital and exposure. You need all that to ascend — and Harsin doesn't have it right now. He's never had it here and the odds are starting to stack against him.

"I've heard that it's gonna be challenging, it's going to be tough," Harsin said of this job at his introductory press conference. "You'd better be the ultimate competitor. You better have that mindset and you'd better be a guy that embraces that and loves it."

He thought he knew what he was up against.

I wonder what he'd say now.