This is an opinion column.
It’s all coming together.
Alabama’s among the hottest teams in the nation having won its ninth straight Saturday, 66-10 over a painfully overmatched Chattanooga.
Meanwhile, in Auburn, the recently resurgent Tigers paid a team from Las Cruces $1.85 million to beat the dignity out of this rebuild. Its three-game SEC winning streak was a reason for confidence before the Tigers encountered the second-best team in Conference USA.
But Auburn dirtied their diaper in a frankly embarrassing effort. A 31-10 loss saw the Tigers outgained 414-213 and out-gutted right from the start on a day it began as a 25-point favorite.
They got flat-out bullied in a game that makes one question the direction of this reclamation project.
But, at the same time, does it leave Alabama exactly where Auburn wants them?
Hear me out.
The Crimson Tide (10-1) enters next week’s Iron Bowl with all the talk skipping right ahead to the following Saturday’s showdown with No. 1 Georgia.
RELATED: Auburn’s Hugh Freeze says loss to NMSU ‘feels like a bad dream.’
Of course the Alabama coaching staff have been preparing for this reality and test of human nature given the playoff implications. The job of hyping Auburn as a threat got more challenging Saturday when a New Mexico State player straight up body slammed a Tiger before finishing off the rest.
Let’s be fair when comparing the opponents who visited Tuscaloosa and Auburn on Saturday.
Chattanooga is an FCS team whose starting quarterback sat out the trip to Bryant-Denny Stadium, ceding that position to freshman Luke Schomburg, a Sparkman grad from Huntsville. It wasn’t a fair fight while New Mexico State was on a six-game winning streak against higher-level competition. Despite losing to a UMass team that Auburn beat 59-10, this is a landmark year for the Aggie program and they may have given these Tigers the ultimate parting gift.
I know what you’re saying.
You’re the idiot who picked Auburn to beat NMSU, 35-10.
Fair, but I’ve seen a few Iron Bowls in this era and nothing is easy when Alabama heads east from Montgomery.
I also acknowledge the dynamic in play defies certain precedents.
Auburn won three of the last five Iron Bowls played in Jordan-Hare Stadium, but each of those games saw the Tigers enter the last Saturday in November ranked and with optimism.
They were good teams. This one is average with the scales on Saturday tipping towards below that.
Lest you forget 2021.
That was decidedly not a good Auburn team, one that finished 6-6 under the first year of the Bryan Harsin disaster. That was a Tiger team that limped into Thanksgiving weekend on a three-game losing streak and Bo Nix on the sideline injured. They were facing a one-loss Alabama team with a first-year starting quarterback who already had an SEC title game date the following Saturday with No. 1 Georgia.
What happened that evening in the snake pit of Jordan-Hare should give any future Alabama team pause before entering. That Auburn defense made Heisman winner Bryce Young’s day a living hell until the final 1:35 and overtime that shouldn’t have been necessary. An ill-advised run out of bounds on a play that could’ve sealed it for Auburn left the door open just enough for Alabama the sneak away with a 24-22 win requiring four overtimes.
Lest you forget what year it is.
There will be plenty of bad voodoo in the air for the visitors as Auburn celebrates to the 10-year anniversary of the Kick Six by hosting a reunion of the 2013 team.
Reminders of the ultimate blown opportunity on that field will bathe the pregame discussion for an Alabama program whose last comfortable win on that turf came 12 years ago.
There’s just something about that place and this rivalry that turns things weird.
Alabama fans on social media were reflexively cringing at the prospect of facing the most easily overlooked Auburn team in memory.
What’s scary about a team that took consecutive sacks on its final drive down 21 to New Mexico State?
Everything?
Because there’s no such thing as a gimmie in this one, not on that field and not when there’s another carrot dangling in the distance.
And because there’d be no greater Iron Bowl rope-a-dope if Alabama takes the bait.
It’s all coming together if Auburn can mark the 10th anniversary of its cruelest rivalry moment with its weirdest.
Michael Casagrande is a reporter for the Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter @ByCasagrande or on Facebook.
