Fuck it, I'm taking this as not quite a moral victory but just a bullshit loss that we frankly would have won with even close to decent refereeing. Many Auburn fans agreed online and on the BART ride home. The short field that gave Auburn its first score was due to a bad fumble call, zebras negated the pick six, and other calls killed dr…
Fuck it, I'm taking this as not quite a moral victory but just a bullshit loss that we frankly would have won with even close to decent refereeing. Many Auburn fans agreed online and on the BART ride home. The short field that gave Auburn its first score was due to a bad fumble call, zebras negated the pick six, and other calls killed drives. We needed a perfect kicking night AND/OR more offense to overcome a good Auburn defense AND some crazy biased calls... But we didn't. This to me is much more on bad juju than on the coaches, and it sucks that we have historically bad juju.
Still, Jackson was so much fun to watch in person and the defense was great too. We'll pull some upsets this year and are still a borderline bowl team even with 7 ranked teams on our schedule. As for computers, we dropped 3 spots in FPI to 33rd (Auburn also dropped 3 spots to 25th) and 5 in SP+ to 54th (Auburn dropped 6 to 24th). FPI has us going 5.9-6.1: we're favored outright per FPI in 4 games and dogs in 6 (all the ranked teams except WSU), and UCLA is our best opportunity for an upset (42%) to go bowling. Our chances with the rest range from 19.6% (UO) to 38.4% (OSU)... far better than the three single-digit chances FPI gave us in the preseason (UW/UO/USC).
The bad part is the Auburn loss harmed any buzz we've been building, and affected momentum for attendance and donations. Hopefully a couple/few upsets help... early with OSU or UW would be great.
Fuck it, I'm taking this as not quite a moral victory but just a bullshit loss that we frankly would have won with even close to decent refereeing. Many Auburn fans agreed online and on the BART ride home. The short field that gave Auburn its first score was due to a bad fumble call, zebras negated the pick six, and other calls killed drives. We needed a perfect kicking night AND/OR more offense to overcome a good Auburn defense AND some crazy biased calls... But we didn't. This to me is much more on bad juju than on the coaches, and it sucks that we have historically bad juju.
Still, Jackson was so much fun to watch in person and the defense was great too. We'll pull some upsets this year and are still a borderline bowl team even with 7 ranked teams on our schedule. As for computers, we dropped 3 spots in FPI to 33rd (Auburn also dropped 3 spots to 25th) and 5 in SP+ to 54th (Auburn dropped 6 to 24th). FPI has us going 5.9-6.1: we're favored outright per FPI in 4 games and dogs in 6 (all the ranked teams except WSU), and UCLA is our best opportunity for an upset (42%) to go bowling. Our chances with the rest range from 19.6% (UO) to 38.4% (OSU)... far better than the three single-digit chances FPI gave us in the preseason (UW/UO/USC).
The bad part is the Auburn loss harmed any buzz we've been building, and affected momentum for attendance and donations. Hopefully a couple/few upsets help... early with OSU or UW would be great.