Auburn Falls 19-35 to Oklahoma in the Sugar Bowl.

It was a sight familiar to Auburn fans in many games: the first drive was a textbook move down the field for a touchdown and Auburn fans were excited about the prospect of what could happen.

Not much happened the rest of the night.

Going into this game, Auburn needed all of its primary weapons from the 6 game winning streak to be healthy and play their best to win a shootout with one of the top offenses in the nation. On that first drive, though, Sean White at some point broke his right forearm on the drive. Though he attempted to play with it for most of the first half, it became obvious on one very poorly thrown "deep" ball that he was not healthy.

Without White, Auburn's offense devolved into the struggling horror that it has been without him at the helm for most of the past two seasons. The Tigers would add two field goals from Daniel Carlson's always-reliable leg, but that was it.

Auburn's defense played strong in the first quarter, holding the Sooner's scoreless in a quarter for only the 4th quarter all season. Once Oklahoma started getting things going, though, the defense was gassed and gashed for much of the rest of the night.

It didn't help that at some point it appeared John Franklin III also may have injured his throwing hand late in the third quarter. With OU scoring to go up 35-13, Jeremy Johnson entered the game at QB. He led the Tigers on a good drive that was moving the ball well before throwing an interception in the end zone with just over 8 minutes to play in the game.

He followed that up on the following possession in the final minutes with a beautiful deep ball to Darius Slayton, which really was just a microcosm of his career. So much athletic potential, but still so many bad plays and decisions.

Credit to Gus Malzahn and Rhett Lashlee for not wanting to go for the sad field goal when faced with 4th and long. They went for the play and got the first down. Auburn called timeouts and on the final play of the game, Jeremy Johnson hit Jalen Harris for the touchdown to cut the final score to 35-19 (no extra point attempt in college football if it's not necessary).

This was definitely not how we wanted to be going into the offseason, but it honestly isn't that unexpected as soon as it was clear White was hurt. Auburn needed the whole team to be healthy to win a shootout, and that obviously didn't happen. We'll have more in the days to come, obviously.

Tonight sucked, yes, but War Eagle. Always.