Just a week after Auburn looked like it had finally found an identity as a football team, the Tigers put up another stinker with a 17-7 home loss at the hands of Vanderbilt.
The Tigers followed up a 300-plus yard rushing effort with just 88 rushing yards in the loss, scoring points in only one of four quarters against a middle-of-the-pack Commodores defense.
Columnist Chase Goodbread dropped the Tigers back down to the second to last spot in the conference following the showing, ahead of only measly Mississippi State. The columnist pokes fun at the aforementioned Freeze in his reasoning for dropping the Tigers, citing Auburn fans are almost as tired of his anemic offense as Freeze is “tired” of seeing Vanderbilt quarterback Diego Pavia.
[autotag]Hugh Freeze[/autotag] fell to (0-3) in his career against Pavia last Saturday. More importantly, the loss dropped Freeze’s team to (3-6) on the season, all but securing a second-straight losing campaign for the Tigers. Not much went right on Saturday, and Auburn’s ranking in the SEC Power Poll indicates just that.
On the other side of Goodbread’s rankings, Georgia (No. 1) held on to the top spot in the conference following another victory while Texas A&M (No. 4) dropped two spots. Texas (No. 2) and Tennessee (No. 3) both benefited from the Aggies free fall and Ole Miss (No. 5) entered the top 5 for the first time since early October.
Auburn isn’t likely to finish anywhere near the top of the Power Poll by season’s end. Still, it does have the opportunity to create some chaos atop the conference with games against Texas A&M (No. 4) and Alabama (No. 6) left on the schedule. However, the Tigers will need to take care of business against ULM this week before that.
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