The SEC Forum at College Football Fan Site, CFB51!!!

They were down to something like just over 70 scholarship players for our game a couple weeks ago.  

I still desire answers for why we had 5 O-linemen transfer out of the program this off-season.  

I also wonder if karma demands that we lose to Ole Miss in exchange for beating Auburn.  

Right now we're still on pace for what I hoped out of this team, just not the way I thought.  Very unforeseen loss to Troy, but we traded that for an unforeseen win vs. AU.  Will almost certainly lose to Alabama, that's still to come.  Plus one game somewhere that I thought pre-season we probably "shouldn't" lose, but would, because those happen.  I wouldn't have picked MSU, but that qualifies.  

So we're still on track, so to speak, but Alabama needs to be the only remaining loss.  Not sure I trust this team to beat Ole Miss, Tennessee, Arkansas, and A&M.  We could be favored in all, but it smells like there's another loss sitting in there somewhere.  We'll see if last week maybe had some sort of galvanizing effect.  The D-line is slowly getting a little healthier, which did help against Auburn.  

So a disillusioned Auburn fan on reddit is a credible game management source?  Okay, I'm also a fan who has access to the internet, so I'll weigh in with my expert advice now too.
It's easy to see why Auburn didn't pass the ball more.  LSU had ELEVEN PASS BREAKUPS, all after the first quarter.  Stidham went 5/7 for 119 in the first quarter.  Then in the second quarter he went 2/6 for 40, and then in the second half he was 2/13 for 6 YARDS.  Did I mention the 11 PBU's?  Only a couple of teams will register that many PBU's in a game all year, and we were one of them last Saturday.  So Stidham went in the tank and/or LSU's secondary dominated the WRs, and the pass rush finally showed up pretty well.  And some of those PBUs were dangerously close to INTs.  Auburn didn't throw the ball more because their passing game was getting absolutely dominated.  
Ask any Auburn fan 35 or over if they remember the infamous "Pass LSU Pass!" game.  God knows I do.  Nobody wants to be the coach who commits crimes like that.  It's pretty easy to see why AU didn't throw the ball more.  It wasn't getting them anything.  Nothing.  
There were a handful of drives AU ran on first down and got 4-5 yard gains.  Then they would try a pass which never went well, and then they would try and cobble something together for 3rd down.  I repeat:  if anything, AU should have ran MORE.  It's not like LSU's run defense is anything to write home about this year.  
And it's not like Auburn put the offense in the shed and went into a shell.  Sure, they got up 20-0, but the next time they touched the ball, it was back down to 20-7, and Auburn had a chance to slam the door.  They wanted to score, obviously, because they did so.  AU pushed the lead back up to 23-7.  Then LSU got a TD before the half.  So it was 23-14 the next time AU got the ball, now in the 3rd quarter and after a sustained LSU drive.  It would be insane to believe the game was salted away at that point, so AU was definitely still trying to score.  There was never a point they were in start-up-the-bus mode on offense.
What I would be more concerned about if I were an Auburn fan is 
1)  Why didn't LSU lose the line of scrimmage a lot more?
2)  Gus saying after the game "they really broke our back with that punt return."  What?  LSU was still losing at that point! 
3)  The fact that Gus was right.  AU looked dead in the water on their sidelines.  
I can meet you halfway and reiterate that I do think some game management should be questioned.  I think Auburn should've gone for 4th and 1 at the 50 late, and then very late they should have punted on 4th and 10 with all their timeouts.  It was crazy to go for it there--even down 2 points--when the passing game had netted squat for 3 quarters.  But this idea that the playcalling was bad is nothing more than your justifying that Auburn is a better team and yet lost the game.  That happens.  As I said earlier, LSU isn't the better team this season, but they were the better team last Saturday.  
And for one moment I'll grant you for the sake of argument that AU's playcalling was bad.  Okay.....so what?  Playcalling is part of being the better team, and if AU didn't have it, then they weren't the better team that day.  
Playcalling is a convenient scapegoat for the loss, but reality doesn't back it up, and that's not being delusional.  That's the facts of the game, and I question your football knowledge if you watched that game and thought Auburn should've been throwing the ball more.  

I was on a roll.

Well, I'm glad you softened them up for us... oh wait....

Not unexpectedly, much of the "talk" about UGA in the media (and among some fans) is how they stack up against another SEC team that had enjoyed some recent success.  I suppose it is the kind of hypothetical expected in an off week.  It also is pretty high praise for that other team.

The undercurrent is "I fear not", as in "Probably not yet.", which also is high praise.

I surmise most hereabouts would agree with the "Not yet, but mebbe in a bit" thought.

If somehow Penn State loses to Michigan Saturday evening, those two SEC teams would be atop the rankings, to the extent that means anything.

I'm not even going to ask who might reach out and stun Bama with a win.  Who might give them a game?  What did A&M do to stay close?  Can anyone else mimic that?  Is it just Auburn, case closed?

If a #2 Georgia beat a #1 Bama in ATL, no one on the committee could look at themselves in the mirror and honestly believe that 12-1 Bama wasn't one of the top 4 teams in the country.