it's with great insight and purposeful study of the circumstance that the certainty of this prediction is..... uh... certain:
Auburn is going to give Bama all they can handle. maybe slightly more than they can handle.
in all seriousness, it's not that Bama isn't the giant they're made out to be, and it isn't that Auburn is woeful- it's that Bama is 'business as usual' while Auburn is playing with moxy fueled by pure hatred of their fellow man. Madden once said that (paraphrased) "emotion will get you two quarters", and that seems to be pretty true. What wasn't shared is that those two quarters may be the last two quarters. That's basically how Clemson beat them... that's how MSU hung around. It's NOT that the recipe isn't known, it's that surviving the Bama 'second half lean' is almost impossible w/o tons of moxy and heated emotion.
surviving the first half is the difficulty- not only speaking in terms of score but in terms of attrition. It's my opinion that this is where the coaches and the offensive plan comes into play- and Malzahn+Lindsey will be up for the task of handing Bama a puzzle enough to not only keep them in the same neighborhood of score, but possibly even match them.... that's good, no? but more to the point they'll be able to do it with some display of sustainment., required to keep the attrition manageable.... then comes the second half.
At any rate, in this dimension or those surrounding, i wager Auburn is capable of scoring as much as 28~35 on Bama. I think their D is capable of holding a functional Bama O to under 45. That leaves a window of 10~17 points or so delta between the capacity of the match, but doesn't speak anything to the 'intangibles'. The intangible points between these two any time they play is at least worth 10 points, and likely in the 17point range. it's just that crazy. Either the 10 or the 17 covers Auburn, so long as they catch every break. There is another intangible, too, that is owned by Jordan-Hare that's worth at least 7 to the home team and has great influence on that intangible 17- which means...... fuzzy math... Auburn is favored in my mind by five and with a final score of 45 to 50 Auburn.
dink-dunk down the field picking on LB's, and opening the 3~4 yard scurry under threat of deep ball on post routes on the weak side (mano-a-mano or what they call 50/50 passes since, oh, 2017 or so; I'm so freaking tired of hearing 50/50 and RPO)... The functional plan to beat Bama is to survive into the second half and see opportunity present itself, and Auburn has the tools to pull that off with a running game, a short/intermediate/deep passing threat, and a RPO (can't believe i just typed that) capability...... similar to the last team that beat Bama and a team that has just as much moxy. Here's to hoping the Bama players have purchased and are fully vested in their 'greatness' (and I'm NOT detracting from that) and believes this is a 'business as usual' game.
^that, y'all, was saying a whole lot without saying anything at all.
