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Lights, camera, failure: Is Auburn 2015 the remake of Auburn 2012?
We've seen this movie before.
It featured quarterback drama, a coach with a championship getting exposed as something less than a championship coach and some proud fans of a proud program trading their ballcaps for paper bags.
It was almost too painful to watch, that fall of Auburn football in the autumn of 2012.
Are we now watching a sequel on college football's largest big-screen TV? Is Gus Malzahn, despite his best efforts, getting ready for his close-up as Gene Chizik 2.0?
You can say there were bright spots for the home team in Mississippi State 17, Auburn 9 - and really there were - but big picture? The black cloud overwhelms the silver lining.
If you're keeping score at home, you shouldn't have trouble keeping score. Auburn has played two SEC games this season, used two different starting quarterbacks and failed to score in the first half of either game.
Oh, and LSU and Mississippi State both were operating with new defensive coordinators.
This was the first time one of Malzahn's Auburn teams failed to score an offensive touchdown since the 2011 Iron Bowl, the last regular-season game of his three-year tenure as Chizik's offensive coordinator. It was the first time any college team with Malzahn on its staff failed to score a touchdown period.
Since Auburn traveled to Starkville a year ago as the No. 2 team in the country and got flushed, the Tigers are 5-7. Take away the 2014 yawner over Samford and this month's great escape against Jacksonville State, and they're 3-7 against Football Bowl Subdivision opponents.
Let that sink in for a moment. That's the trend of a sinking ship.
But this team didn't quit Saturday night, you say. That's true, but neither did the 2012 team during a 12-10 defeat in its SEC home opener against LSU. How did that movie end?
But Sean White brought a spark to the offense in his first college start, you say. He did, and freshman playmakers Kerryon Johnson and Stanton Truitt gave the attack a pulse, but still all the scoring the Tigers could muster was three field goals. Southern Miss and Northwestern State scored more points this month against Mississippi State.
RELATED: Auburn offense a no-show
But Auburn finally started to look like a Will Muschamp defense, you say. True, and Muschamp made a statement at the start by benching some veterans and starting youngsters in their place. At some point a defense grows weary when its offense keeps spinning its wheels.
See 2012.
"This team's gonna get better, and they're gonna fight," Malzahn said. "That's the positive."
OK. Here's another negative. If not Mississippi State, who in the SEC is Auburn going to beat? If not now, at home against a rebuilding Dan Mullen squad, when is Auburn going to scratch in the conference?
The Tigers now have lost five straight SEC games. Only Vanderbilt has a longer losing streak in the league.
"We're gonna get better," Malzahn vowed. "I promise you that."
Promises don't light the mammoth scoreboard or pay all those massive coaching salaries.
One month into the season, Auburn's national championship pipe dreams are dust, and its SEC title hopes are emptier than the upper deck at Jordan-Hare Stadium may be come November.
Malzahn staged one of the greatest season-to-season turnarounds in college football history when he took over for Chizik. Now, two years and a 2-2 start later, the head coach is faced with engineering an equivalent in-season about-face.
Unless he can flip the script, unless those youngsters on both sides of the ball can grow up in a hurry, we know how this movie turns out because we've seen it before.
It's not a happy ending
Lights, camera, failure: Is Auburn 2015 the remake of Auburn 2012?
We've seen this movie before.
It featured quarterback drama, a coach with a championship getting exposed as something less than a championship coach and some proud fans of a proud program trading their ballcaps for paper bags.
It was almost too painful to watch, that fall of Auburn football in the autumn of 2012.
Are we now watching a sequel on college football's largest big-screen TV? Is Gus Malzahn, despite his best efforts, getting ready for his close-up as Gene Chizik 2.0?
You can say there were bright spots for the home team in Mississippi State 17, Auburn 9 - and really there were - but big picture? The black cloud overwhelms the silver lining.
If you're keeping score at home, you shouldn't have trouble keeping score. Auburn has played two SEC games this season, used two different starting quarterbacks and failed to score in the first half of either game.
Oh, and LSU and Mississippi State both were operating with new defensive coordinators.
This was the first time one of Malzahn's Auburn teams failed to score an offensive touchdown since the 2011 Iron Bowl, the last regular-season game of his three-year tenure as Chizik's offensive coordinator. It was the first time any college team with Malzahn on its staff failed to score a touchdown period.
Since Auburn traveled to Starkville a year ago as the No. 2 team in the country and got flushed, the Tigers are 5-7. Take away the 2014 yawner over Samford and this month's great escape against Jacksonville State, and they're 3-7 against Football Bowl Subdivision opponents.
Let that sink in for a moment. That's the trend of a sinking ship.
But this team didn't quit Saturday night, you say. That's true, but neither did the 2012 team during a 12-10 defeat in its SEC home opener against LSU. How did that movie end?
But Sean White brought a spark to the offense in his first college start, you say. He did, and freshman playmakers Kerryon Johnson and Stanton Truitt gave the attack a pulse, but still all the scoring the Tigers could muster was three field goals. Southern Miss and Northwestern State scored more points this month against Mississippi State.
RELATED: Auburn offense a no-show
But Auburn finally started to look like a Will Muschamp defense, you say. True, and Muschamp made a statement at the start by benching some veterans and starting youngsters in their place. At some point a defense grows weary when its offense keeps spinning its wheels.
See 2012.
"This team's gonna get better, and they're gonna fight," Malzahn said. "That's the positive."
OK. Here's another negative. If not Mississippi State, who in the SEC is Auburn going to beat? If not now, at home against a rebuilding Dan Mullen squad, when is Auburn going to scratch in the conference?
The Tigers now have lost five straight SEC games. Only Vanderbilt has a longer losing streak in the league.
"We're gonna get better," Malzahn vowed. "I promise you that."
Promises don't light the mammoth scoreboard or pay all those massive coaching salaries.
One month into the season, Auburn's national championship pipe dreams are dust, and its SEC title hopes are emptier than the upper deck at Jordan-Hare Stadium may be come November.
Malzahn staged one of the greatest season-to-season turnarounds in college football history when he took over for Chizik. Now, two years and a 2-2 start later, the head coach is faced with engineering an equivalent in-season about-face.
Unless he can flip the script, unless those youngsters on both sides of the ball can grow up in a hurry, we know how this movie turns out because we've seen it before.
It's not a happy ending
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