Auburn’s Clint Moseley is seen in this file photo.If youth and inexperience weren’t going to demoralize the 2011 Auburn Tigers, their October schedule certainly would.
That was a popular preseason prognostication regarding college football’s reigning national champions, but the gloom and doom never transpired. Auburn may not resemble last year’s 14-0 version, but Gene Chizik’s Tigers enter this week’s game at Georgia with a 6-3 record and ranked 20th in the BCS standings.
“We’ve lost three games on the road to the No. 1, the number whatever and the number whatever team,” Chizik said. “I don’t know what they are, but they are all in the top 10. That’s not an excuse, because we go into those games expecting to win them, but we’ve come a long way.”
And Chizik admits there is still a long way to go for a team that had the fewest number of returning starters nationally.
Auburn is ranked 89th in total offense (354.2 yards per game) and an abysmal 108th in passing offense (163.1). No one knew for sure what the Tigers would look like a year after Cam Newton, and they have wound up among the nine league teams to switch quarterbacks as the result of performance, injuries or suspensions.