The Auburn Tigers have been on one of the worst stretches in program history over the last few years, and the team is now on its third head coach since 2020 in hopes of snapping that skid.
However, few seasons have been quite as ‘unlucky’ as the Tigers’ 2025 season, according to CBS Sports’ Tom Fornelli.
The metric Fornelli uses to determine luck is simply the results of one-score in-conference matchups, a stat in which the Tigers were the worst team in football last year. Under Hugh Freeze, Auburn lost all six of its one-score conference games in 2025, the most of any team in any conference.
“Based on the numbers we’re looking at, there’s an argument to be made that Auburn was the unluckiest team,” he said. “It had a positive turnover margin in these games, but not to the ridiculous extent Kansas State did. The Tigers went 0-6 in these games, with their lone two-score conference loss being a 20-10 defeat at Georgia. So even that loss was close.”
However, Fornelli did, in fact, do his research on the Tigers’ 2025 season, and he believes that though luck may have been a factor in their horrific season, there is almost certainly a different culprit, and it is one Auburn fans have been seeing for a few years now.
“However, I don’t think this was about luck as much as I think it was about a horrific offense,” he said. “The reason Auburn was in so many close games last year was its phenomenal defense, which kept games close. At the same time, there was the wild 45-38 overtime loss to Vanderbilt, but the Tigers’ defense didn’t allow more than 27 points in any other SEC game. The offense just couldn’t score any d— points of its own to win these games.”
Amidst a highly embarrassing stat for the Auburn family, there is some good news, namely the fact that the vast majority of Auburn’s ‘phenomenal’ defense, as Fornelli describes it, will return under Alex Golesh in 2026, along with an entirely revamped offense.
After all, when Hugh Freeze was fired from the program, just about all of his offense left with him, leaving Jeremiah Cobb, the Tigers’ RB1, as the lone returning starter from last year’s squad. This meant that Golesh had to completely rebuild the Tigers’ offense, which, in the interim, is being transplanted by a majority of players who played under Golesh at USF.
That is not to say these players are not up to the task of the SEC, though; Byrum Brown, Keshaun Singleton and Jeremiah Koger, in particular, have shown flashes of top-level playmaking ability against Power Four teams, which bodes well for the Tigers’ offense in 2026.
So, if the Tigers are able to get their offense running on all cylinders, the ‘bad luck’ that has plagued their program may suddenly dissipate in 2026, though it will still take a herculean effort from Tiger coaches and players to make a deep SEC run this season.
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