Tired Tigers rest before Iron Bowl

AUBURN — For the first time in a long time, linebacker Craig Stevens doesn’t have any plans for Saturday.

Thinking about that brought a big smile to his face one day after arguably Auburn’s most gut-wrenching loss of the season at Georgia.
“Oh yeah. That’s really good,” Stevens said. “That’s why a lot of us just had to go all out this week.”

Those thoughts of Saturday quickly brought back a somber look to Stevens, who, like head coach Gene Chizik and a number of Auburn players Sunday, called the 31-24, mistake-filled loss to the Bulldogs one of the hardest of the season — if not their entire Auburn career.

“That’s probably the worst one this year, man,” Stevens said. “You hate to lose a game like that where it’s just fighting the whole game and in the end it just doesn’t turn out the way you want it.”

The way Auburn let a 14-0 lead disappear, failed to generate much offense in the second half and shot itself in the foot with a number of self-inflicted penalties — by veterans —– brought back memories of its 21-14 loss in October to Kentucky, which just picked up its second SEC win of the season Saturday against Vanderbilt.

The Tigers mustered just three points of offense over the final three quarters while Georgia put up 31 against an Auburn defense that appeared to grow increasingly fatigued with every series. The loss of linebacker Eltoro Freeman to a concussion certainly didn’t help matters, as Georgia gashed the Tigers with run after run on its way to 169 rushing yards — all but 10 coming in the final three quarters.

“For a good bit of that football game we were playing well against the run,” Chizik said. “We’ve got to be able to sustain that through four quarters. It’s just that simple.“

As he has throughout Auburn’s 11-game stretch without a break, Chizik refused to use the schedule and Auburn’s lack of depth across the board as reasons for the dropoff.

“I can go back to that and back to that. It’s more execution than it is,” Chizik said. “Obviously, we’d love to sub in more D-linemen and more linebackers and more safeties. Obviously, we’d love to be able to do that but we don’t have that luxury.”

Depth certainly didn’t play a factor in the two crippling penalties Auburn committed on its final drive of the game, which stalled inside Georgia territory.

Chizik was bothered more by the respective guilty parties than the penalties themselves Sunday.

After picking up two first downs, Kodi Burns’ 26-yard reverse pass to Terrell Zachery was called back after Burns was flagged for illegal procedure. With the Tigers’ backs already against the wall on fourth-and-18 from the Georgia 30, junior offensive tackle Lee Ziemba jumped before the snap, making Auburn’s final play of the game more of the desperation variety.

“These are guys that you’re counting on to win ball games for you,” Chizik said. “They’ve played a lot of football. You can’t pin it on one guy, but in those critical situations, without question, I just think it’s a lack of concentration and attention to detail.”

That concentration should be honed in after the three days off Auburn will have from the practice fields this week. The Tigers, while still attending a number of team meetings, will not practice until Wednesday and have most of Friday and Saturday off before returning to their normal schedule Sunday.

So while the Tigers were more than forthcoming when prompted about their upset hopes in next Friday’s Iron Bowl, the focus on Sunday centered on nothing — as in what they plan to do with their days off.

“I’m just going to sit around the house and enjoy the day off,” Stevens said. “That’s all you can do because during the school year and football season you’re on the move so much that when you finally get time off, you want to relax. That’s all I do.”