Auburn closed out Bryan Harsin’s first bowl game as the Tigers’ head coach in much the same way it handled the second half of the regular season — very badly.
After shutting down the now 12-2 Houston Cougars' offense for most of the game, Auburn once again wasn’t able to get a put-away score on offense and gave up a late game-winner on defense.
It was a very familiar and dispiriting sight.
It’s fair to say that the Birmingham Bowl is a game nobody wanted to be playing in. That’s far from the same thing as saying it was a game folks wanted to lose.
There’s nothing good to say about what’s now the longest losing streak in Auburn’s modern history. If there’s anything like a silver lining it’s only that none of those games, all against bowl teams, were blowouts. The Tigers were close (or ahead) in all but one of 2021’s seven losses in the fourth quarter.
That’s not much, but it’s also not nothing. There’s an old coaching adage that describes the steps of rebuilding a program as: “Lose big, lose close, win close, win big.”
Outside of an impressive October run, Harsin hasn’t reached step three, but he also hasn’t backslid into step one. It’s better to be building up from dropping competitive games than it is from being consistently run out of the stadium.
Defensively Auburn improved over most of the season, with the ugly exception being the second half of the Mississippi State loss. Even the patchwork roster for the bowl game held a normally high-scoring Houston offense to just 17 points.
It took a lot to get there — and one hopes that the lessons learned both by the players and the staff will be put to use in 2022. For example, I feel very comfortable in speculating that the Tigers would have had least two or three more wins this year if defensive coordinator Derek Mason had brought the kind of pressure during the first 11 games that he did during the last two.
The offense, though, hasn’t been good for a complete game since going to Arkansas in mid-October; its dreadful lack of production in the second half bears most of the responsibility for the entire losing streak.
Some of that is due to personnel, including both what Auburn has (a habitually meek offensive line) and doesn’t have — namely a healthy, SEC-caliber quarterback.
But some of it is also due to plain old bad planning and bad play calling. Those of us who were hopeful for improvement after the (welcome) departure of Mike Bobo were more than a little disappointed to see many of the same mistakes repeated in Birmingham.
Lack of commitment to the running game? Check. Throwing the ball on short-yardage downs when the passing game could be charitably described as less-than-dependable? Check. Weird trick plays at inopportune times? Check.
Complete inability to put a game away late? Check. And mate.
Putting things bluntly, it’s hard to see how Auburn will improve much in the next season with the same personnel on the field. The offensive line is if anything worse than it was a year ago — when it was pretty bad — and if there’s an answer at quarterback, the last three games indicate it won’t be T.J. Finley.
We’ve been hearing for a while now that Harsin plans to rebuild the offense out of the Transfer Portal. To date, there’s been remarkably little headway made on that front, although the Tigers’ strong finish on the December Signing Day does give some room for hope.
Certainly any aspiring QB or OL could look at this dismal November/December run and believe he'll find the field early and often.
On the other hand, he might decide the offense stinks a little too much.
How much difference incoming offensive coordinator Austin Davis can make in either personnel or strategy is yet to be seen, but I can tell you this: any extended repeat of the offensive futility of the last five games in 2022 will have the wolves in full bay.
As noted previously in this space, pretty much any coach gets a Mulligan during his first year. Pat Dye and Tommy Tuberville also finished their first seasons at AU one win shy of .500. Both of those guys turned out pretty well.
However, that free pass expired with the clock in UAB’s new stadium on Tuesday. From now on, Harsin is playing for keeps.
Barring a monumental disaster, this losing streak will end on Sept. 3, 2022, in a game only slightly more meaningless than the one just played. What happens between now and then will be the real measure of whether Harsin and Auburn are ready to take the next step.
TALK about this column in the THE BUNKER with other outstanding members of the Auburn fAUm'ly:
