Auburn’s 44-39 loss to Florida didn’t just leave the Tigers with another defeat. It left a bigger question hanging over the offense: is Byrum Brown actually the answer at quarterback?
Brown finished with 336 all-purpose yards and four total touchdowns, a line that looks productive on paper. But Auburn dug itself such a deep hole in the first quarter that the late push never fully changed the conversation. By the time the Tigers reached the second quarter, they had minus-3 yards of offense, and Brown had already missed on his first five passes before throwing an interception on Auburn’s opening drive.
That ugly opening forced head coach Alex Golesh to absorb most of the blame afterward.
“That’s more on me than anything else. I’ve got to do a better job of giving him an opportunity to get going,” Auburn coach Alex Golesh said postgame.
“It’s the first-down inefficiency for us in general today. And, really, that was almost the whole game.
It’s the inability to run it or throw it there on first down to get yourself in second-and-manageable.”
Golesh kept coming back to the same theme: first downs, and the lack of rhythm that followed them. He said Auburn’s start was as bad as any under his watch, and he called the first quarter “abysmal.” He also said the staff had a good plan, but it clearly didn’t show up the way it was supposed to.
“We spend a lot of time on how do we start it,” Golesh said. “We’ve taken a lot of pride in feeling like we know what’s happening and starting it fast.
I thought we had a really good plan. Obviously, we didn’t.
I think that’s more on me than it is anybody else. I’ve got to do a better job of figuring it out with, specifically, getting him going.
I thought his process was high-end through the week, and I thought it was today, going in.”
Brown did settle in after the opening quarter, but Auburn never escaped the consequences of that slow start. Florida scored 17 unanswered points after halftime to build a three-score cushion late, and in a key moment for Auburn’s comeback hopes, Brown missed a wide-open Keshaun Singleton on a deep ball that would have been a touchdown.
The pressure never really let up on Brown, either. He was sacked seven times, including five times in the fourth quarter alone.
Still, Brown made it clear afterward that he’s focused on owning his part and moving forward.
“I will go in (Sunday), be super critical of myself, and then just on to the next one, and learn what I can do better for this Auburn team,” Brown said postgame. “I just got to be better. I’ll take the L on it, and yeah, just got to be better executed.”
The schedule doesn’t offer much breathing room. Brown’s next two conference games come against freshman quarterbacks at Vanderbilt and Tennessee, and Auburn heads into its open week after that. If Brown’s big moments don’t start turning into wins, the patience around him - from Golesh and from the fan base - is going to disappear fast.
Golesh said he wasn’t ready to label Saturday’s effort as sloppy, but he did make it clear the details weren’t there.
“I don’t know if sloppy was the word (Saturday),” Golesh said. “I didn’t execute early on offense.
I didn’t communicate well enough on defense to get checks right, to get in the right defense, get everybody on the same page right. I don’t know if I would have used the term sloppy.
I would tell you the detail lacked.
“We’re not there. We’re not there as a football team.
And I’m talking about offense. I’m talking about defense.
I’m talking about special teams.”
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There is also a broader pattern worth watching from last years top Alabama names once they got to college, with CD Morgan, EJ Crowell and DeShawn Spencer all beginning to show signs of early impact. Spencers path is especially relevant on the Plains, since Auburn coach Alex Golesh played a role in recruiting him, another small reminder that the states high-end talent is already linked back to Auburn in more ways than one. [Read more 🡒]