AUBURN | It can be frustrating at times watching Auburn’s defense and that included last Saturday night.

As Ole Miss quarterback Matt Corral carved up the secondary for 289 passing yards, often connecting with wide open receiver for chunk plays, you start to wonder if the Tigers’ defense will ever get a stop.

Then Zakoby McClain makes an open-field tackle to stop a running back for a 4-yard gain instead of 12. Then Roger McCreary breaks up a pass on second down and Colby Wooden hurries Corral into an errant throw on third down.

Before you know it, the defense gets a stop. Except against the Rebels, AU also had to come up with three fourth-down stops on four attempts.

Ole Miss drove into AU’s red zone eight times and came away with just 20 points — two touchdowns and two field goals. The other four trips, all of which came in the second half included three failed fourth-down attempts and an interception by Jaylin Simpson in the end zone.

It’s the proverbial bend but don’t break, and it works. So well, in fact, that the Tigers have climbed to third in the SEC and 24th nationally allowing just 19.8 points per game.

You can bring up all the stats and advanced metrics you want, but holding opponents to under 20 points a game is going to translate into a lot of wins, period.

So it may be aggravating, you may want to pull your hair out, but Derek Mason’s defense is working and it’s getting better — better as the season moves on and better as a game moves on. Mason and his staff’s in-game adjustments have made a difference, especially in key SEC wins at LSU and Arkansas and Saturday night’s 31-20 win over Ole Miss.

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One more quick thought on Saturday night’s game.

What does it say about this Auburn team that when the defense was struggling a bit in the first half, that the offense stepped up and scored 28 points.

When the script flipped in the second half and it was the offense that could only manage one field goal, it was the defense that raised its level and held an explosive Ole Miss offense to just one 49-yard field goal.

That’s a team that believes in each other. And they believe in Bryan Harsin and their coaching staff too. I can’t give you a better example than the below video…

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In today’s musical journey, we go back 51 years to the inauspicious debut of a band that would change its name and go on to become one of the greatest groups of all time. On Nov. 1, 1970, the Festfolk Quartet, which would later become ABBA, made their first-ever appearance at a restaurant in Gothenburg, Sweden. ABBA has gone on to become one of the top 30 musical acts of all time with over 150 million in album sales and 48 hit singles. They are the best-selling Swedish band of all time and had eight consecutive No. 1 albums in the UK. ABBA was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2010 and their hit song, Dancing Queen, was inducted into the Recording Academy’s Grammy Hall of Fame in 2015. Surprisingly, the group was never even nominated for a Grammy Award.

ABBA was formed by a pair of married couples — Benny Andersson and Anni-Frid ‘Frida’ Lyngstad, and Björn Ulvaeus and Agnetha Faltskog. The couples met on holiday in Cyprus in 1970 and sang together for fun on the beach and for some U.N. soldiers. In 1972 they had a minor hit together, People Need Love, and another the next year in Ring, Ring. They officially named their band ABBA, based on their four names: Agnetha, Björn, Benny and Anni-Frid, in 1973 and had their big breakout the next year winning the Eurovision Song Contest with their hit song, Waterloo. Another hit, Mamma Mia came in 1975. ABBA had trouble catching on in the U.S. until releasing their greatest hits album in 1976 and then their hit single, Dancing Queen, which his No. 1 on the Billboard 100 and in a dozen other countries. They had another big hit, Take a Chance on Me, in 1977. They continued to tour and produce albums until breaking up in 1982. Both couples also split up. In 1999, their music was adapted into a musical, Mamma Mia! and later a film of the same name in 2008 with a sequel in 2018. The group reunited in 2016 and is working on a new album and tour.

Rehearsals for Festfolk, a cabaret show, began in September of 1970 at the Sankt Jörgen hotel. The show was negatively reviewed and was often performed in front of less than a hundred people at restaurants or hotels. One part of the show did become popular, however, which was the song Hello, Old Man, the first to be sung by the quartet. The song told the story of an old Salvation Army soldier and charted in Sweden for 15 weeks. The four started working more together the following year, which led to the formation of ABBA over the next three years.