Auburn quarterback Byrum Brown scramblers against pressure from LSU’s defense Saturday at Jordan-Hare Stadium. Brown was sacked six times in the Tigers’ 38-17 loss. (Austin Perryman/Auburn TIgers)
AUBURN — By necessity, Auburn fans are a patient lot, for they have had to be and must continue to be. As such, they clung to some positives after a 38-17 loss to No. 18 LSU (and, even worse, Lane Kiffin) on Saturday.
One week after beating No. 1-ranked Georgia in Athens, nobody was screaming for first-year coach Alex Golesh to be fired. No boos chased him off the field, as they did Hugh Freeze almost one year ago. Tailgate parties continued unabated. Little boys played pickup games with touchdowns on every play, no doubt emulating what they hope Auburn football looks like when they put on the pads someday. (Of the three-touchdown defeat, Golesh freely admitted: “That didn’t look like what I would anticipate Auburn football looking like.”)
The 88,043 fans who boosted the noise level in and around Jordan-Hare Stadium to a shrill 118 decibels early in the game (equivalent to a jetliner at takeoff, thousands of chainsaws or nearby thunderclaps) even managed to get in one good “F*** Lane Kiffin!” before Kiffin, no doubt satisfyingly, made them stick a sock in it as LSU began to squeeze Auburn by the neck.
Those fans have something to look forward to off the field. In a few weeks, former Tigers coach Tommy Tuberville will be elected guvnah by about the same margin as LSU won on Saturday.
“There’s no silver lining,” Golesh sighed to reporters afterward. “There’s no anything.”
Perhaps Golesh said that because he knew a massive opportunity leaped high above the grasp of his yearling program. In many ways, the LSU game was more important than the Georgia game, for it could have showed that the Tigers can handle success. Instead, Auburn — which has a history of somnambulistic play in 11 a.m. kickoffs — didn’t prove that the win over Georgia was not a fluke. Instead, the Tigers proved the long-desired sign of a true turnaround was premature.
In Auburn’s defense — and little of it was seen on Saturday — the defeat also proved that each SEC game is its own season. Comprehend this: Auburn lost to LSU, which lost to Kentucky, which lost to Alabama, which lost to Georgia, which lost to Auburn.
Remnants of toilet paper from the Georgia celebration were still stuck to the trees at Toomer’s Corner Saturday but that’s the only reminder of that stunning victory that so many were so sure showed Auburn was reawakening. So how could a team that rallied from a 14-0 deficit in Athens — and an offense that was snapping the ball every 21.7 seconds, the fourth-fastest tempo in the country — resemble an armadillo that had been run over by a tractor trailer?
LSU was physically superior, especially at the line of scrimmage. Kiffin signed the nation’s No. 1-rated transfer portal class along with top-10 high school signing class and outgained the Tigers 552 yards to 271. LSU drove 95 yards for a touchdown immediately after a 69-yard punt from Auburn’s Hudson Kaak. It dug out of a second-and-20, turned a deaf ear to all those decibels, imposed its will and had generally fit the Tigers for a body bag by halftime, when it led 31-10. By the time Auburn got the ball for the first time in the second half, LSU had used 7½ minutes of the third quarter.
“We did not play anywhere near winning football today in every imaginable way,” Golesh said afterward following a lengthy postgame tabulation that he said showed about 20 negative plays. “I didn’t think we tackled anywhere near where you have to. Reset and respond is what the name of the game is.”
What must be reset that hasn’t already been? The offense consisting of more than quarterback Byrum Brown scrambling?
A newly configured offensive line that excelled at Georgia couldn’t handle LSU’s speed on the edge and Brown was the unhappy recipient of all that pressure. Brown, who wore down Georgia with designed runs and scrambles, finished Saturday with six sacks and just 21 yards on 19 carries. Afterward, he was delayed in meeting reporters, as he was still digging himself out from under white jerseys following an afternoon parked in third and long.
But Brown said the loss did not set back Auburn’s perceived progress in rebuilding a championship program.
“It’s a part of it,” he said. “There’s ups, there’s downs and this is obviously a down. Last week was up but this is going to help define who this ’26 Auburn football team is, how we respond this week into next week.”
LSU might also have shown the form that was expected of a program that lured Kiffin from Ole Miss and spent an estimated $50 million on its roster, the fourth-richest in the country, according to The Athletic. LSU led the SEC in total offense and defense coming in and was the only team in SEC ranked in top 10 nationally in both.
“This is where we planned on being,” Kiffin said after the convincing win.
Quarterback Sam Leavitt is getting on the same page of the playbook with his receivers, especially Jackson Harris, who had nine catches for 178 yards and two touchdowns against Auburn. Leavitt was not sacked and accordingly was 32-of-45 passing for 387 yards and three touchdowns.
Kiffin left the Plains on a bus a happy man, even if all the sorority houses were under heavy guard. Meanwhile, Auburn (4-3, 2-3 SEC) must contend with its fourth straight October game against a top-20 team when it visits Ole Miss on Halloween and Golesh can only hope the mental toughness he has instilled in this team will show itself down the stretch.
“You know where your holes are,” he said. “At this point in the year, so does the other team, so we’ve got to continue to do a really good job of figuring out what those are and masking them in every way. … Obviously, I did not have them ready to rock (Saturday) but I’ll find a way to make sure that we respond because it’s the only option we’ve got. I do believe that we’ve got a bunch of dudes in there that’ll fight, that’ll figure it out. I told them they’ve got tonight to feel some sort of way about it, to feel sorry for themselves, and then tomorrow morning it’s a reset, no different than a good win. The response has got to be exactly the same. We’ve had the highest of highs and (today) would be the lowest of lows.”
