Turnovers, poor execution in the second half, costly penalties – rinse and repeat. The same issues that have plagued Auburn during its current 1-6 spell against Power Five opponents reared their ugly head again as the Tigers saw a 17-point lead disappear before their very eyes in a 21-17 loss to LSU.
Following another offensively futile second half Saturday, head coach Bryan Harsin was once again forced to answer questions about his future on The Plains and if he will even be able to complete his second season at Auburn. He responded by stressing that he's sticking to what he can control.
“That’s my job,” Harsin said. “To show up and make sure that I’m prepared and that we get this football team prepared and that doesn’t change whatsoever.”
For five consecutive SEC games, Auburn has held a double-digit lead. Its record in those contests is 1-4. Last week’s miraculous win over Missouri was Auburn’s only win in that span.
The blown leads: 28-3 against Mississippi State, 14-0 against South Carolina, 10-0 against Alabama and 17-0 against LSU. Missouri also came back from 14 down, though Auburn won in overtime.
Despite an abundance of media speculation regarding his future as Auburn's head coach, Harsin is prepared to go about his business as normal this week, ignoring the outside noise, with no change to his or his team's day-to-day approach.
"That's always been how I've approached each and every day of every job I've had," Harsin said. "That'll be no different. Tomorrow we have things we've got to get better at. Win or lose, you're always going to find ways to improve as a football team. You have to, that's really what it comes down to so that's how I'll approach each and every day...That's always been the mentality that we have."
With a 9-9 record - the worst by an Auburn coach through his first 18 games since Doug Barfield in 1976-77, Harsin maintains he is focused on the present, not the past.
“We can focus on now. That’s what you have to do,” Harsin said. “That’s always our focus. We can’t go back and change the records. What do we do moving forward? That’s really what it comes down to.”
The first half has not been a problem for Harsin’s Tigers. Auburn has not trailed at the half against an SEC opponent since playing Georgia on October 9 of 2021. In the eight SEC games since, Auburn has outscored its opponents 125-82 in the first 30 minutes.
The second half has been an entirely different story. In its last seven SEC games, dating back to a win over Ole Miss last October 30, Auburn has been outscored 77-15 in second halves and has not won the final 30 minutes against a Power Five team in that span.
Harsin, along with several of his players, said the consistent second-half struggles come down to one thing - execution.
“It comes down to four quarters of really executing and doing the little things,” Harsin said. “There were plenty of things we did that hurt ourselves.”
Just 11 months ago, Auburn was coming off of a win over a top-10 Ole Miss team and Harsin was 6-2 as Auburn’s head coach. Auburn was ranked No. 13 in the first CFP rankings of 2021. Optimism surrounding Auburn football was high.
Since then, Harsin’s program is 3-7 and not been ranked by any poll since a loss to Mississippi State last November 13. It was a swift plummet from grace for the second-year head coach.
But as of now, despite what the future may hold, Harsin is still Auburn's head coach and he still has a job to do.
“We’ll handle what we can control,” Harsin said. “We’ll work on things to get better and then we’ll go out there and get ourselves ready for this next week.”
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Matthew is a senior from Huntsville, Alabama, majoring in journalism. He started with The Plainsman in fall 2021.
Twitter: @mattwallaceAU
