What Auburn captured this season was such gossamer, was so much spun sugar, that to declare the Tigers certain of duplicating it — or bettering it — next season is a risky presumption.
Ah, we want to slot them right away among the chosen teams of 2014. It was but moments after Florida State’s Kelvin Benjamin collected his last-minute winning reception in Monday night’s rousing BCS Championship game that ESPN produced its rankings for a season that is only a speck on the horizon, eight months distant. The Seminoles remained No. 1. Auburn was a highly premature No. 5.
Just how the football fates can and do perform their sudden 180s was played out graphically Monday night at the Rose Bowl. The example of Chris Davis will long serve to remind us all that there is often a debt to be paid for every smile that fortune turns one’s way.
At the end of November, the Tigers’ defensive back was among the cream of Auburn society. His coach Gus Malzahn had at the last second stationed him in the end zone with Alabama lining up for a 57-yard field-goal attempt, and his length-of-the-field return of the short kick instantly became an Iron Bowl heirloom.
Thirty-seven days later, Davis was in the middle of everything that went wrong for Auburn on FSU’s one-minute, 80-yard drive that won the night. His missed tackle set the Seminoles’ Rashad Greene loose on a 49-yard catch and run, the longest play of the drive. (He wasn’t the only defender who forgot his lessons from Pop Warner — the teams didn’t combine for 31 points in the fourth quarter without a good deal of help from unschooled tackling).
Five plays later, on a third-down pass into the end zone, Davis was flagged for riding Greene without a saddle. A 50-50 pass-interference call, maybe, but those coin-flip odds had to start going against Auburn sooner or later.
“I thought it was good defense, but I guess the ref didn’t think the same,” Davis was quoted afterward.
The next play just was unfair, Davis giving up eight inches to wide receiver Benjamin, and losing that fight in the end zone. In such a high-stakes match-up, it’s all about the Benjamin.
“They made a play, we didn’t. That’s what it all comes down to,” Davis said. No one knows better the truths on both sides of that football maxim.
Now, spread that personal example around to an entire program. Malzahn was stubborn in the face of disappointment — as coaches must be — declaring soon after Monday’s loss: “Our goal is to get back (to the championship), and I really believe we’ll do it.” But there is no way to guarantee that those Tigers can duplicate all the elements, magical and practical, that these Tigers mastered.
Something FSU coach Jimbo Fisher said Tuesday in his morning-after press conference also applies to Auburn: “We’re not interested in being a great team; we want to be a great program.” Taking a moment and building it into an era is the chore of the offseason.
Auburn won a title in 2010, then suffered through a winless SEC campaign two years later. Could the Tigers “Chizik” it from here — yes, that is a verb now, referring to Gene Chizik, the coach who took Auburn from one pole to the other before being replaced by Malzahn this season? Not if you believe that Malzahn’s gift for offensive improvisation and his unblinking attention to detail will override the inevitable fluctuations in talent.
How does Auburn build from here? It most certainly will rely upon the Marshall Plan.
Unlike Chizik’s experience in 2010 — in which Cam Newton came and went like a model of iPhone — Malzahn does not lose his foundation quarterback. Nick Marshall, the fallen Georgia defensive back who rebuilt himself 150 miles to the southwest, did not report to Auburn until the summer. Now Malzahn will have an entire spring and offseason to groom a player who benefited from an 12-2 season and going toe-to-toe with the Heisman Trophy winner in the last four minutes of a national championship game.
Said Marshall’s position coach, Rhett Lashlee, “There’s not anyone else I want playing quarterback for us other than No. 14. I’m glad we have him back for another year.”
The young quarterback has the lesson of Monday night to counterbalance all the expectation of victory that grew almost out of control with the events of the regular season.“I really thought we had it,” he told reporters postgame, “but you just can’t count it out until the clock hits 0:00.” Live and learn.
Marshall could have as many as nine of his offensive starters returning. Although, having just broken Bo Jackson’s single-season rushing record, junior running back Tre Mason may find the temptation of the NFL too strong. Not surprisingly, he was in no mood to make any declarations after the loss.
“Emotions are everywhere right now,” Mason said. “That’s not really what’s going through my head right now.”
The Tigers’ leader on the offensive line, left tackle Greg Robinson, faces a similar decision, with reports Tuesday that Robinson tweeted the he is leaving. Five starters on defense will have to be replaced.
Something else Fisher said Tuesday — hey, the winners get to write both the history and the agenda — that reaches from Tallahassee to Auburn. “It’s human nature that you take winning for granted,” he said.
Success is not self-sustaining. It can pass as quickly as the hangover of those who celebrate it. Followers of Auburn know that all too well. Given the wild extremes of the past four years, they might be happy if success occasionally rented a timeshare near Jordan-Hare Stadium.
But they and those within the Auburn huddle must address a prickly question now: How do we replace the sheer charisma of the season just gone by?
