Gus Malzahn’s ritual of going to Waffle House after a win is becoming less common as the weeks pass by and after a 30-24 loss to Tennessee on their home field, it makes me wonder, What is the current state of this football program? First and foremost, Auburn is a program that has National Championship expectations each and every year and after a win over Washington in week 1, the Tiger faithful believed this could be the year that they overcome the toughest division in all of college football. However, a few weeks later they lost a hard fought game to the Tigers from LSU on a game winning field goal and since then their season has turned into something that nobody expected, even linebacker Deshaun Davis called going into week 7 with a record of 4-3 “a complete shocker.” This is a team right now that needs leadership because if they plan to salvage the season and win a few games down the stretch, they are going to have to look like an entirely different team that they have the past two weeks.
The issues with the Tigers right now go beyond the field. An anonymous player was quoted recently saying “ Gus is a mid-major coach at best who has no clue what he is doing right now and should be canned after this year.” This statement is huge in so many ways because during the 2017 season, Malzahn was a few games away from getting fired but he turned the season around and they were 1 win away from an appearance in the College Football Playoff, after the season, he was rewarded with a 7 year, 49 million dollar contract. To be clear, Gus Malzahn is not going to get fired after this year or even next year but with the type of money that he is making, it represents him beating teams like Alabama and Georgia in November, not losing to a 2-3 Tennessee team in October. As the Tigers schedule gets more difficult down the stretch, it is going to be hard for this team to get some wins. Maybe the anonymous player was right about Malzahn, perhaps he is not the right man for the job, but either way, Auburn is paying a heck of a lot of money for a football coach that goes 7-5.
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