Re: Auburn (and apologies in advance if I'm repeating some things you guys already know).
I think Auburn is going to be very young, talented, but very young and on the low end of experience. They lost 25 seniors from last year’s team plus 3 underclassmen who opted to leave early for the NFL. They lost 4 of their starting offensive linemen and return only their center which I think has 5 starts to his credit.
Their leading running back, Whitlow, is in the transfer portal and one of the seniors now gone was in the RB rotation. They have good talent at RB, just not a lot of experience or returning production. Bo Nix will be a SO with experience but he won’t have an offensive line. Jarrett Stidham was a good QB and seems to be the favorite to take over for Brady this year with the Patriots but in 2018 when we played him he didn’t have an offensive line. jmo.
Their defense also lost a lot. And again, they do have some talent but they lost most of their production from the defensive line and they lost both starting corners and both starting safeties. They also lost their starting edge rusher. From the DL Brown was the #7 pick in the draft and Davidson was #47. Igbinoghene, a corner, was a first rounder at #30. There was a lot of talk last year about how MSU having had the #1 defense in the entire country in 2018 and having lost 3 first rounders to the NFL would still be a force to reckon with in 2019. I thought that was BS and sure enough their defense in 2019 finishes ranked #73 in the nation. Obviously, Auburn has better talent than MSU but they're not going to be anywhere near as good as some may be claiming. jmo.
Six of the guys they lost were drafted and at least 8 more signed UDFA deals. They really lost a ton of experience and production. Can they offset that with young talent? Football is a developmental sport. First you have to learn what to do and how to do it. Then you need experience. Auburn ranks 77th this year in returning production, 78th on offense, and 78th on defense.
Bill Connelly had Auburn at #8 in the nation last year in the preseason. He had them at #9 at the end of the season. He had Tennessee at #21 in the preseason and #29 at the end of the season. For 2020 he has Auburn at #11 and Tennessee at #19. But get this, in 2018, the last time Auburn didn’t have an offensive line he had them at #5 in the preseason and they finished at #17. I will be very surprised and I think it will be an anomaly if Auburn doesn’t significantly underperform their consensus expectations for this year. jmo.
Obviously, this is a weird season but the SP+ is calculated first and teams are ranked before schedule performance forecasting is done so I don’t think the fact that we’re operating in a conference only format has an impact on the preseason SP+. I think it would have an impact on how many wins or losses we were projected to have – based on how our schedule lines up. It will probably predict us to lose to Auburn again, pretty much like most people were doing in 2018. I sort of think the breaks went our way in the 2018 game. I think if we get the opportunity this year we’re going to straight up kick Auburn’s ass and everybody is going to know it was the real thing. jmo.