Auburn Tigers were most overhyped team of 2015, and it will only get worse

The Auburn Tigers were picked by the SEC media and many others to win both the SEC West and the conference championship this year, and its now quite clear – overhype is a kind way of describing what went on.

There have been several disappointing teams who were ranked in the preseason Top 25, but there may not be any who received the undeserved hype and media push as the Auburn Tigers.

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Preseason rankings are right up there with MLB Spring Training records, and NBA Winter League games in being an accurate depiction of what a team is really about. Unlike the NFL, college football has no preseason, no warm-up or exhibition games (well, not officially, but Week 1 schedules would argue differently for some schools).

So when you look at preseason rankings each year, know that you are looking at nothing more than conjecture…a feeble attempt at guesswork in a white lab coat while peering into a beaker full of player names.

When the preseason rankings were released in 2015, and the talking heads began making their predictions for conference champions and teams to “watch out” for this season, the Auburn Tigers seemed to come across the lips of everyone, and they were sitting at No. 6 in the preseason AP poll, and even No. 7 in the coaches poll.

A team who had finished 8-5 in 2014 — and lost to four out of their eight SEC opponents, and who were losing their starting quarterback, leading running back and leading wide receiver — was suddenly going to climb past Mississippi State, LSU and Alabama and dominate the SEC West, and all of this was predicated of the emergence of one player who would lead the Tigers back to the top…

Jeremy Johnson.

Yes, a quarterback who had pitched relief for a couple of seasons, and had nine touchdowns, two interceptions and 858 passing yards to his career credit was not only being declared the next Cam Newton, but was included in the preseason Heisman Trophy chat by some.

It’s not really clear whether all these lofty expectations for Johnson and the Tigers were crystal ball-gazing, or simply throwing garbage against the wall to see what sticks, but there was one particular writer who covers college football that wasn’t buying into the hype.

It was just too much to swallow. This mediocre team which was losing more pieces than it was gaining certainly wasn’t going to rise up from the ashes and phoenix themselves into a conference title.

In Week 1, the Tigers faced an unranked Louisville Cardinals team at a neutral site (Atlanta). They eeked out a 31-24 win, but Jeremy Johnson looked really shaky, throwing three picks and only one touchdown on an 11 of 21, 137-yard performance.

The Tigers held fast in the polls, somehow.

Week 2 saw Auburn face an FCS opponent, Jacksonville State. You’d think the No. 6 team in the nation playing at home would boatrace a team like this. Instead, the Tigers found themselves needing a miracle at the end of regulation followed by overtime to beat the Gamecocks by a touchdown.

Johnson was again very suspect in his play, throwing two more interceptions and having at least two more balls that shoulda-coulda been picked off.

The Tigers dropped to 18th in the AP poll, and 15th in the coaches poll.

In Week 3, Auburn was set to begin conference play by taking on one of the teams many had predicted to finish below the Tigers, and that was LSU. Traveling to Death Valley is never easy, and this would be the first real test for Auburn’s revamped defense under new DC Will Muschamp.

Test…failed.

LSU dominated Auburn in every facet of the game, and trounced the other Tigers 45-21. Jeremy Johnson looked completely overwhelmed, throwing for just 100 yards and yet another interception.

Auburn fell out of the AP Top 25, but was somehow still considered good enough to be ranked No. 25 in the coaches poll (Gus Malzahn must have given some great Christmas gifts last year).

So from No. 6 to out of the rankings in just three weeks, and anyone who whispered Jeremy Johnson and Heisman in the same sentence was to be immediately entered into concussion testing. Johnson was to be benched for the next game in favor of redshirt freshman, Sean White.

The damage wasn’t done there either. This past week Auburn returned home to the Plains, where they treated fans to one of the most flat and uninspired performances by a team seen in recent years, falling 17-9 to the Mississippi State Bulldogs (a team who was picked to finish last in the SEC West by the same group who crowed Auburn the champs).

That loss finally knocked them out of the coaches poll.

So now the team who had been the consensus pick to play for an SEC Championship in December has to try and salvage a season, sitting at 2-2, with two conference losses and no real answers at quarterback, in a system that relies heavily on a versatile, running quarterback to be successful.

No pressure, Gus. None at all.

And what’s coming down the road for the Plainsmen? San Jose State, Kentucky, Arkansas, No. 3 Ole Miss, No. 14 Texas A&M, No. 8 Georgia, Idaho, and then the Iron Bowl. On the plus side, five of those remaining games are at home, although that may not even make a difference.

Sep 19, 2015; Tuscaloosa, AL, USA;. Mandatory Credit: Marvin Gentry-USA TODAY Sports

There are at least five possible (even probable) losses in that stretch of games, which would leave Auburn sitting with a 5-7 record at the end of the year. This could easily turn into one of the greatest cases of a team receiving all the love in the preseason and completely melting down and finishing with an abysmal losing record.

In terms of the rankings and predictions, none of this is Auburn’s fault. It doesn’t fall on Gus Malzahn’s shoulders, and it certainly can’t be blamed on Jeremy Johnson. I can’t think of a single person officially affiliated with the Auburn program who said “Hey look guys, we have Will Muschamp and some nifty young players. If you don’t pick us to win the SEC, you don’t know a football from a piece of jerky.”

No, this falls squarely on the backs of those who make predictions and vote in polls who fail to use eyeballs and common sense as opposed to their marbles when giving opinions.

Unless a team has made a number of significant improvements in the offseason and/or had a spectacularly good recruiting class, there’s no reason in the world to assume they’ll improve by more than one or two wins at most. Auburn was a team going through a defensive overhaul and shift to a new system, breaking in a new starting quarterback who had very limited experience, and was going to be looking to new players at the skill positions to take over for a couple of NFL draft picks.

They should have been figured to possibly even lose one or two more games than 2014, which is exactly where they’re headed.

This was a case of classic overhype. Someone sold some important people on the idea that Auburn was going to have another miracle turnaround, and should be blessed with an unreasonably high ranking.

Thank the football gods the BCS is no longer around, or there would be some teams struggling to make their way into the computer rankings thanks to teams like Auburn who were overextended in the polls.

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