Gus Malzahn's Auburn fights from Kick Six

After a loss to Tennessee (yes, this Tennessee), Auburn still has to ask questions. The once-logical choice of dethroning Alabama in the SEC West this year – if one team did it – made 6-6 believe it would be a good final record.

It was after a promising 10-4 season in 2017, when the Tigers defeated the two teams that competed in the national championship game.

It's clear that in the middle of the 2018 season, Auburn is not a good football team. Gus Malzahn has some serious questions to ask about why his team is 4-3. Cloakrooms would not be in the right place, any more than the product on the ground.

But what we think that Auburn can be year after year, is a story about the power of results and the miraculous nature of games played in the sport.

The 2013 Kick Six evening was special, but did the Jordan-Hare Prayer create an unrealistic ceiling for the Gus Malzahn Auburn Tigers?

These two incredible games (one against Alabama, the other against Georgia) made the difference between a regular season of 10 wins and a regular season of 12 wins. The miracle and prayer led to victories, as did the subsequent SEC match against Missouri, which Auburn played through these games.

If the Kick Six had not broken down and Bama's match had been extended, everything could have happened. But even if Auburn had won, a regular season of 10 wins would mark the high point of the program under Malzahn in recent years. The total of Auburn's recent wins is eight, six, eight, 10 and now between six and eight.

These are really good regular seasons for a ton of programs. But when you inject the level of emotion that the Auburn has included in 2013, and this Near a national championship in the title match in 2013 against Florida State, it's starting to look like a flash bottle as time passes.

The Tigers are 23-23 against the Power 5 teams since the Kick Six. Compare this to this company:

Auburn is 3-2 against LSU since the Kick Six – sinking against the LSU in each of the last two seasons – plus a 1-3 against Alabama, a 1-4 against Georgia and 2-3 against the Mississippi State.

All this does not mean that Malzahn is not a good coach. But much of what makes it successful is not working at the moment.

Malzahn is an offensive innovator based on the old variables, which I do not mean by a simple figure of speech. Malzahn's offensive borrowed single-wing tactics that were in vogue 100 years ago. And the problem is that it's a part of those programs that fail at Auburn in 2018. That's a big problem, since the Tigers are silencing the ball:

In three of the first five years of Gus Malzahn's career, the Tigers finished between the fourth and 17th nationals with a number of yards per run, plus twice in the top 11 in his three years as a CO .

His Tigers have never been as bad as they have been preparing for six weeks in 2018: 82nd out of 130 FBS teams with an average of 4.18 yards. And they have not even reached the hard part of the SEC's calendar yet.

And the last part of this passage is essential because the Auburn program will get worse. Tennessee was supposed to be a layup. Instead, it was a loss, raising real concern about the severity of the problems that could arise at home. College and Magnolia writes:

Auburn is now sitting at 4-3 and there are serious – SERIOUS – questions from everyone about the ability of Gus Malzahn and his staff to keep things in place and rally this team. It will not be easier with Texas A & M, Georgia and Alabama who are all gone. The Tigers put Ole Miss on the road next Saturday for another coup at 11 pm at Oxford.

With this calendar, Auburn does not have much margin of error to come home. The rest of the way must be counted two or three times with three difficult matches, a layup (against Liberty) and a tossup against Ole Miss. It's just to get eligibility.

This is where success can play against a coach.

Because although the 2017 Auburn season was excellent, the Tigers showed that they could not maintain this level of play. They have barely approached since.

If Auburn will be OK with Malzahn looking more like a good coach that one championship level the coach remains to be seen. But it will cost him more than $ 32 million to send him back this season or just after, thanks to an extension he signed after the Tigers lost to Georgia in the title game in Georgia in 2017.

2013 seems to be a long time ago.