COLLIER: A good win over a bad team can yield important gains

In five decades on the rollercoaster of Auburn football, I’ve seen a few teams that needed a win more desperately than the Tigers of 2018 did on Saturday morning.

Not many of them, mind you, but a few.

Nobody reading this to be told that things were bleak going into the Ole Miss game. After the on- and off-the-field chaos of the last two weeks, AU either was going to staunch the bleeding or roll over and consider how to rebuild.

And what do you know? They didn’t roll over.

A road game in the SEC typically isn't the ideal tourniquet for a struggling team, but to the surprise of more than a few (myself certainly included), Auburn answered the doubters by putting the game away before the fourth quarter even began in Oxford. The team coasted to a 31-16 win that wasn’t as close as the score.

It wasn’t quite just what the football doctor ordered, but it'll do — for now.

Bear in mind, Ole Miss is not good.

This is a probation-strapped, one-dimensional team with a place-holder head coach. They’ve been whittled down to a grand total of three playmakers on offense. The Rebel Black Bear Landsharks barely have a defense in any reasonable sense of the word.

Even so, after the now-standard opening touchdown drive, Auburn’s offense was about as inept as its 2018 standard against Ole Miss for the rest of the first half. So let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves here.

All that understood, in the third quarter, you could see things coming together. This is what we all expected to see this fall.

The running game, carried on the wounded-yet-functional shoulders of Boobee Whitlow, started clicking. Feeding off Whitlow’s success, the offensive line finally ditched the matador impressions and started acting like they might one day belong in the SEC.

(Funny how that can happen when you commit to the run game rather than panicking and falling back on predictable passing sets, but I digress.)

Whitlow was aided and abetted by the emerging youth movement in the receiving corps. Everybody talks about Anthony Schwartz and his Ludicrous Speed — for good reason — but Seth Williams already has the best hands on the team. He's also a star in the making.

Along with Jarrett Stidham and Darius Slayton on one of their good days, that’s the core of an offense that might be able to do things.

I say “might,” because, as noted, the Ole Miss defense really does stink. Succeeding against them is not the same thing as succeeding against any of the SEC teams left on the schedule. Still, that's certainly preferable to failure.

Auburn finally managed to avoid turnovers, which had doomed the Tigers in their three losses to date. It was a near thing at one point. Whitlow should buy Schwartz a nice dinner for staying with the play after Boobee fumbled just before crossing the goal line ... again.

On that point: We love you, Boobee, and want you to get well soon. Just never do that again, okay?

I don’t recall Stidham having even a near-interception — and that all by itself was a huge improvement. If Auburn had turned the ball over just once, we’d probably be having a very different conversation today.

So was this the long-anticipated “switch turning on” for the offense?

I’d sure like to think so. An Auburn that could at long last find its mojo would make the next month a whole lot more interesting, to say nothing of more fun.

Unfortunately, we’d be crazy to assume that. Yeah, it was a win on the road with a lot of points against an SEC team. Those are good things.

But again, it was against a bad SEC team. Ole Miss had to stage a massive comeback to beat Arkansas a week ago and I’d be mildly surprised if Arkansas could beat Auburn High School.

Still, you play the conference schedule you're given and it’s not unheard-of to improve against a bad team. Tommy Tuberville’s last good Auburn squad found its footing against New Mexico State, of all opponents, in 2007 and then went on to upset Florida and finish strongly after staggering through September.

Getting back to the present, prior to Saturday we were looking at a team and a program on the edge of implosion. The fact that it hasn’t (yet) imploded is worth considering.

I think there’s only one thing we can be reasonably sure of right now: Despite several opportunities, this team hasn’t given up.

The defense could well have rolled its collective eyes and slacked off during the dreary first half, but it didn’t. The offense could have continued on its self-destructive path and continued to turn the ball over, but it didn’t.

There’s fight left in this team. No matter what you think about the far-from-ended turmoil over the head coach and staff, you ought to consider that as a good thing. They’re going to need every ounce of fight that can be mustered during the next month.

I can’t think of a previous Auburn team that needed a week off more than this one does today. There’s a lot of healing to be done, most desperately for Whitlow and tackle Jack Driscoll, and a long-overdue round of self-assessment.

How well (or badly) Auburn collectively manages this last breather will tell the tale of 2018 — and very likely many seasons that follow it.