Auburn’s path to a bowl game is suddenly sitting in plain sight.
That would have sounded generous not long ago, especially after the way the Tigers came out of their last two games. But with four games left, the math has shifted in Auburn’s favor, and the schedule ahead is a lot friendlier than the one it just survived.
After a rough October that still included the upset win at then-No. 1 Georgia, Auburn now gets a stretch that looks far more manageable.
The next three opponents line up well for the Tigers. Arkansas is 1-5 against Power Four teams this season and just got pantsed at home by Missouri.
Mississippi State is dealing with its own issues, including the absence of Kamario Taylor and backup quarterback AJ Swann leaving the Texas loss with his arm in a sling, while the Bulldogs have scored just 18 points over their last three games. Then comes Samford, a 3-6 team with one of the worst offenses in the FCS.
Alabama closes the regular season in the Iron Bowl.
Beat Arkansas and Samford, and Auburn is headed back to a bowl game for the first time since 2023. Win over Mississippi State, and the Tigers would lock in their best regular season since going 9-3 in 2019.
“We’re locked in on the process, for sure,” defensive tackle Cody Sigler said. “(But) we do realize that these next three, next four games that we have are pretty big games for us to get this thing back on track.”
The bigger picture is hard to ignore, too. Auburn has played in only two bowl games since Gus Malzahn was fired, and both ended in losses. The Tigers haven’t won a bowl game since 2018, which means they’ve now dropped four straight postseason games for the first time in program history.
With that in mind, the latest bowl projections all point to one place: Birmingham.
CBS Sports has Auburn facing Syracuse in the Birmingham Bowl. USA TODAY and College Football News both project the Tigers against Memphis there as well. Sports Illustrated has Auburn matched up with Northwestern in Birmingham.
ESPN’s Kyle Bonagura slots Auburn into the Gasparilla Bowl against USF, while ESPN’s Mark Schlabach projects the Liberty Bowl against Oklahoma State. Athlon Sports also has Auburn in the Gasparilla Bowl, this time against Virginia.
The SEC’s bowl lineup includes the Gasparilla Bowl on Dec. 18, the Duke’s Mayo Bowl on Dec. 26, the Birmingham Bowl on Dec. 29, the Gator Bowl and Music City Bowl on Dec. 30, the ReliaQuest Bowl, Las Vegas Bowl and Texas Bowl on Dec. 31, and the Citrus Bowl and Liberty Bowl on Jan. 2.
In Other News...
Arkansas Faces A Defining Auburn Test With Its Season Slipping Away
Arkansas heads into Jordan-Hare Stadium with the kind of urgency that tends to sharpen a November matchup. The Razorbacks and Auburn have built a strange little run in recent years, with road teams winning each meeting since 2021, even as Auburn has maintained the edge in the overall series. This time, both programs are being guided by first-year head coaches, with Ryan Silverfield leading Arkansas and Alex Golesh taking over at Auburn, adding another layer to a game that already feels bigger than the record books suggest.
For Auburn, the setup is straightforward enough: the Tigers are favored at home and looking to protect a pattern that has made this series feel unpredictable regardless of venue. For Arkansas, the stakes are more sobering, with bowl eligibility slipping further out of reach and little margin left to change the seasons direction. Silverfield has had success against Golesh before, going 3-0 in their head-to-head meetings, but this one arrives with the Razorbacks needing more than history to tilt the balance. [Read more 🡒]
Auburn Gets Its First Real Test Of A New-Look Rotation
The opening week of the 2026-27 mens college basketball season is already starting to take shape, and Auburns first night at home will offer an early look at how the Tigers new rotation comes together. Southeastern Louisiana comes to town for the opener, giving Auburn a chance to settle into game speed in front of its own crowd before the calendar turns more demanding, while the broader Wednesday slate also includes matchups involving Butler, Saint Josephs and other Division I programs.
For Auburn, the real interest is less about the opponent than about how the pieces fit in a first game setting. The schedule release also points to a busy opening stretch around the sport, with game times, broadcast windows and streaming options spread across multiple platforms, and it arrives as the college basketball landscape continues to shift with coaching changes elsewhere, including the transition at Saint Marys. For the Tigers, though, the first test is right there at home, and it should say plenty about where this group stands before the season really starts to tighten. [Read more 🡒]
Auburn Pass Defense Has A Bigger Problem Than Fans Wanted
Auburns pass defense has become a weekly talking point for all the wrong reasons, and defensive coordinator D.J. Durkin didnt try to gloss over it during his press conference. He pointed to a few bright spots, but the larger picture has been hard to ignore after the Tigers were picked apart by LSU and Ole Miss quarterbacks, with the defense giving up big passing numbers and touchdowns in both games.
The concern goes beyond coverage, too, because the front has not consistently helped create pressure. Auburns defensive line has managed only one sack in two games, and the Tigers now sit 15th in the SEC in pass defense at 252.4 yards allowed per game, with 17 sacks on the season. For a team trying to steady itself in league play, the issue is no longer just a bad stretch, but a problem that keeps showing up in different ways. [Read more 🡒]