Auburn’s Bryan Harsin critical of players but not himself....

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The situation at Auburn is worse than I could have imagined. The guy in charge apparently thinks he’s doing a good job of coaching his team, and that the players are the problem. Three games into his second season, Harsin has mastered the art of excuses and pointing fingers, but I guess that’s what happens when a university launches an internal investigation and then doesn’t follow through with the point of it all. A good coach takes the blame after a bad loss. They own it. In the Monday news conference after an embarrassing Saturday of Auburn football, Harsin instead serviced his ego by talking down to reporters and shifting the weight of responsibility away from himself. To hear him tell it, Harsin is above accountability for what happens during games.

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Preparation wasn’t the problem, the coach said, it was all the players and their mistakes. Harsin blamed his players about a dozen times for a lack of “execution” with obnoxious levels of peevishness and obfuscation. This long, rambling rationalization for Auburn’s day of blunders explains everything about Harsin’s lack of respect for those around him. “It is not necessarily the mentality of the team,” Harsin said. “There were mess ups, and there were things that we didn’t do correctly. That’s the execution piece. That’s the part I talk about that execution is the key. “If you have to be in a gap, you’re in the gap. If you have to cover a man, you cover the man. If you have to run the right route, you run the right route. And that does not have anything to do with mentality. That’s simply executing the job you’re supposed to do. “There are 11 guys who all have an assignment…You have to do your job. When you don’t do that, and somebody exposes you on that, then things happen. Then you wonder why a big play happens or they rip off a big run or we don’t have somebody in the flat when a quarterback is rolling out.

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That wasn’t designed that way, so if we execute what’s designed, we have a better shot of executing our plays and they’re going to work better and at least give ourselves a chance. To me, that’s really what it is. It’s about execution, and not so much about mentality and all those things that create the drama.” Which is to say, Harsin is either smell-blind to the huge piles of horse manure he’s heaving over his shoulder, or he didn’t watch the same second half that I did. Once a standard bearer of SEC toughness, Auburn’s defense allowed Penn State running backs to gain nine yards per carry in the second half. Meanwhile, Auburn abandoned its running game run (the team’s strength), and benched its quarterback. Auburn football, after two warm-up games to begin the season, is a mystery no more. The team is soft, and ill-equipped for the rigors of second-half football just as competition in the SEC begins. That’s the coach’s fault, and speaks to something greater than one loss to Penn State. In its last five games against Power 5 opponents, Auburn has been outscored 94-18 in second halves.

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Coach, the car isn’t broken. It’s out of gas. In a game between two struggling teams, Auburn (2-1) plays Missouri (2-1) at 11 a.m. on Saturday at Jordan-Hare Stadium. Auburn is favored by seven points, but has now lost six games in a row against teams it didn’t pay after a victory. How far has Auburn fallen over the last five years? Since 2018, the Tigers are 2-8 against teams from the SEC East. The only victories against SEC East teams during that span were in the unprecedented pandemic season of 2020 in which SEC teams played all 10 games against conference opponents. Gus Malzahn’s final season at Auburn featured wins against Kentucky and Tennessee. Not bad in hindsight. Not nearly the standard of success Auburn demands from its football team. At least Malzahn knew how to put his players in positions to win, though, and didn’t blame the personnel for ill-suited schemes. No wonder quarterback Bo Nix left for Oregon and defensive coordinator Derek Mason bolted for Oklahoma State. They saw what was coming before anyone else because they were on the inside and knew the truth.

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How could a team play so poorly as Auburn did against Penn State? It’s got nothing to do with a game plan. A loss like that all starts with the head coach and how he built and trained his team months before the season. Auburn’s true character under Harsin was revealed in those painful moments after halftime, and it was a brutally honest accounting of a football team unprepared.

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