Auburn left Knoxville with a long list of reasons this one got away.
The Tigers had chances early, stayed within striking distance at halftime and even outgained Tennessee in total yardage, but a messy second half turned a winnable game into a 24-14 loss on Saturday. Tennessee finished the job by outscoring Auburn 21-7 after the break, and Auburn never fully recovered from the self-inflicted damage that piled up along the way.
Coach Alex Golesh pointed directly at the offensive breakdowns after the game, especially the false starts and the way they wrecked any chance at rhythm.
“Obviously, offensively, we had a bunch of false starts. We didn’t handle the crowd noise well enough in the first half,” Auburn coach Alex Golesh said postgame.
“I felt like we had a good plan; we obviously didn’t execute it; therefore, it was a bad plan. And that’s my fault.
With the false starts, hard to get in rhythm.
“We picked up some first downs but couldn’t get in a real rhythm to be able to efficiently move it. And then kind of flipped the script in the second half -- we gave up the drive for a touchdown.
And then we played possession football, then we punted down, they’re backed up. We had two penalties for 30 yards that got the drive started.
We just couldn’t ever dig out of it.”
The Tigers still finished with 345 total yards to Tennessee’s 323, and quarterback Byrum Brown produced 266 all-purpose yards with two touchdowns. But the numbers were undercut by three turnovers, pushing Brown to seven on the season through Auburn’s first five games. He was also sacked four times, and the offense as a whole committed eight of Auburn’s 11 penalties.
Brown said the answer has to come from the work week, not the postgame mood.
“Just got to go back to work. We know what we’re capable of when we are clicking on all cylinders -- offense, defense, special teams,” Brown said. “Just got to be intentional in practice, have that carry over to the game and then we will show what we are all about.”
The penalty problems started before the snap and kept stacking up. Center Cole Best said six of Auburn’s eight offensive penalties came pre-snap, and every starting offensive lineman except freshman Wilson Zierer was flagged for one.
“Man, if there’s anyone to look back on, look back on me. There’s a lot of things that I could have done better,” Best said.
“There’s a lot of things that we could have done better as an offense. Definitely wasn’t a game where flat-out just thought that they were better than us.
Credit to them. They played their butts off, and they executed in big moments when we didn’t.
So, it’s a tough loss.”
The defense had its own rough afternoon. Auburn missed 12 tackles and gave up 237 rushing yards, with Tennessee running back DeSean Bishop doing most of the damage on the ground. Bishop rushed for 220 yards and scored three touchdowns.
Inside the locker room, linebacker Elijah Melendez said the message was about keeping the group together and owning the mistakes.
“Really, just no matter what, sticking together like glue, never pointing fingers,” Melendez said. “Everybody has something that they got to get better at, no matter what.
And I’m going to take full accountability in myself and hold others around me accountable. And I feel like everybody on the team has at least one thing they got to get right at.”
Auburn enters its bye week at 3-2 overall and 1-2 in the conference, with plenty to clean up before a road trip to Georgia.
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Auburns 24-14 loss to No. 17 Tennessee left the Tigers at 3-2 overall and 1-2 in SEC play, and it made the upcoming bye week feel less like a breather and more like a reset button. Alex Golesh pointed to the second-half performance as the place where things slipped, with the run defense, pre-snap penalties and even the crowd noise all showing up as problems that disrupted what Auburn was trying to do on offense.
Golesh also touched on individual player performances, a reminder that this is not just about fixing one phase of the game but about sorting through several issues at once. The bye week now offers Auburn a chance to clean up communication, tighten the defense against the run and get the operation smoother before the schedule turns back toward SEC pressure. [Read more 🡒]
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The defense did give Auburn chances by forcing turnovers, but the missed opportunities piled up once Tennessee leaned on DeSean Bishop in the second half. Bishop finished with two touchdowns and helped turn a competitive game into another frustrating result, leaving Auburn with little margin for error and even less time to sort out what is going wrong before the trip to face Georgia. [Read more 🡒]