Auburn Football Opens as Heavy Underdog to Ole Miss

The past two weeks have been a rollercoaster of emotion for fans of the Auburn Tigers, who saw their team take down the No. 1 team in the country last week, but on Saturday, they also watched their team lose in blowout fashion to the No. 18 LSU Tigers. It’s not time to depart the ride yet, though, as this week, the Tigers are scheduled to take on No. 12 Ole Miss.

This is certainly an interesting matchup for the Tigers, as Ole Miss beat LSU back in Week 3, but has also dropped games to Florida and Texas. On paper, the two teams’ records may appear to be somewhat similar; however, the Tigers’ losses certainly reflect worse on their program than that of the Rebels, though the Tigers certainly have the best win between the two teams after beating Georgia.

As of Sunday, the Tigers are an 11.5-point underdog to the Rebels for their matchup in Oxford, and it’s not hard to see why, especially after the Tigers lost by three scores to LSU this past Saturday.

In that game, the Tigers’ offense was nearly nonexistent, scoring just 10 points with starting quarterback Byrum Brown on the field, who passed for just 160 yards over the course of the game. He also led the Tigers in rushing, though that’s a feat made objectively less impressive by the fact that the Tigers rushed for just 67 yards over the course of the matchup.

Auburn’s rushing attack has struggled all season, but it seemed to be at its worst against LSU, as the Tigers averaged just 1.9 yards per carry, with Brown leading the pack with 21 total rushing yards. Ironically, Brown’s longest rush was 34 yards, but he was sacked six times for a total of 39 yards lost, leading to his game total being smaller than his longest rush.

The Tigers made it quite clear against Georgia that when Byrum Brown is rushing the ball effectively, the rest of the Tigers’ offense opens up. Against LSU, the Tigers were completely unable to establish any form of a rushing attack, forcing the team to rely on forced passes that, admittedly, did not do much for the struggling Tigers.

If the Tigers want to beat Ole Miss this week, or at least cover the spread, getting Byrum Brown going on offense will be paramount to success, though if Pete Golding’s defense is able to stifle the USF transfer like Kiffin’s defense did, the Tigers could be in for another long 60 minutes of game time.

This group has shown an ability to make the most of big-time games, though, so it would be unwise to rule the Tigers out completely. ESPN’s FPI gives the Tigers a 25.1% chance to take down the Rebs this Halloween, which are far better odds than they had against Georgia.

Game odds refresh periodically and are subject to change.

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