The Auburn Tigers weren’t happy with their performance against the No. 18 LSU Tigers on Saturday afternoon, losing at home 38-17. 

After the game, head coach Alex Golesh had plenty to say, being mainly critical of his group following a performance that saw the Tigers take down the No. 1 team in the country a weekend ago. Now, he will go back to the drawing board for another top opponent next week in Ole Miss. 

Here are five important quotes that Golesh mentioned after the loss. 

“There’s no silver lining. There’s no anything. It was that bad in every imaginable way.”

Golesh didn’t mince words after the loss on Saturday: Auburn didn’t have any fighting chance to take down LSU with the field performance he saw. 

The Tigers went down early to another group of Tigers, allowing 31 points in the first half while allowing quarterback Sam Leavitt to have his best game as an LSU player. Auburn had to play more aggressive through the air, and its opponent took advantage with the pressure it was able to bring. 

It wasn’t like the balanced effort that we saw in the Tigers’ win over Georgia. Instead, Golesh didn’t have any positive takeaway regarding the game, perhaps potentially the garbage time drive that Auburn scored on to close the game.

“I thought we had a good plan from a protection standpoint. There was a couple of pressure that we didn’t adjust to, which has been something we’ve been really good at.”

Like I said above, LSU feasted on Auburn quarterback Byrum Brown on Saturday, sacking him seven times to make life difficult. Brown would only finish with 181 total yards, including only 21 yards on the ground. 

Brown’s legs were the difference-maker in the win over the Bulldogs in Athens, and he was completely neutralized by opposing defensive coordinator Blake Baker. When he was forced to throw, LSU was able to shut him down to make Auburn’s offense a non-factor. 

Golesh needs to see more from both his offensive line and his quarterback, entering the SEC this season with hopes to impose their will on opposing teams. That’s been a hit-or-miss so far in Year 1.

“We didn’t find enough creative ways to be able to generate the run game, and it kind of goes back to we’ve got to be really strategic in how we generate run game, and today, obviously, I’ll own 100% of the plan wasn’t good enough.”

Auburn couldn’t run the ball at all on Saturday, only recording 67 rushing yards off of 2.4 yards per carry. For a program that has been looking to bring that dominance back to the Plains, it wasn’t visible on Saturday. 

Half of the yards came from one rush, too, being from Brown on a 34-yard scamper that would eventually set up a 1-yard score from the quarterback. Besides that, Auburn’s top rusher, Jeremiah Cobb, only had 14 rushing yards in the loss. 

If the Tigers can impose their will running the football, they become a completely different team for the better. That will be the objective for Golesh going into Oxford, Mississippi, this week.

“Our defense sees it, has seen it all year from our offense. So, I thought, from that side, we were in a decent place, obviously then the execution piece of it has got to go with it and we certainly didn’t execute at any level.”

Golesh is referring to the tempo that LSU ran at various points in the loss. While it looked like the Tigers couldn’t keep up at times, Golesh said the team was prepared for those looks that head coach Lane Kiffin were going to bring. 

Some of those looks came in the first half, where LSU would pull away from Auburn by 21 points. Golesh would see his group allow 552 yards of offense on Saturday, being the most yards in a game that Auburn has allowed all season. 

It doesn’t get any better next weekend, going to an away environment to face a Rebel team led by standout quarterback Trinidad Chambliss. 

“[I] told them they got tonight to feel some sort of way about it. Feel sorry for themselves, and then tomorrow morning it’s a reset, no different than a good win.”

Golesh reiterated this point even after the biggest win of the program for the last decade last weekend: last week’s emotions need to be flushed. 

It will be an important rest for this Auburn team, who have had a roller coaster of a month that has been filled with an open date, comeback victories and plenty of different environments. There’s one more hectic stadium the Tigers will need to play in, going to Vaught-Hemingway Stadium to face an Ole Miss team that is also coming off an SEC loss: the Texas Longhorns. 

Kickoff is set for 11:45 central time from Oxford, with the game being broadcast on the SEC Network.