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One last beautiful shining day of Auburn football left this season. That’s it, that’s all we get. We were fortunate to get fourteen games this year, and it could’ve been fifteen if we’d taken care of business the first time around in this building.
Auburn plays UCF today in the Peach Bowl to finish the 2017-18 season. Sure, the Tigers would love to be playing the game immediately following ours way out west in Pasadena, but that’s not the way the season shook out.
There’s no need to be disappointed, either. We get to be one of the final teams taking the field for a football game this season, and a ton of eyes will be on the Tigers as they try to flex their muscles and put a hurtin’ on an awfully talkative UCF team.
The Knights have boasted all during the month leading up to this game that Auburn “doesn’t have enough speed” and that UCF is “way ahead in terms of bowl prep” and that “there are holes that we’ll exploit in Auburn’s defense”. Awfully loud for a team that didn’t play a ranked opponent until the final week of the season. Awfully loud for a team that gave up 1400 yards of offense in its final two games.
Word is that Kerryon Johnson is fully healed from his shoulder woes and fully fueled up on infinite Chick Fila nuggets and Polynesian sauce. When Kerryon goes, the offense goes, and against a defense that hasn’t seen a power attack like the Tigers will bring in, it could be a fun day for Kerryon and his buds on offense.
Now, UCF is pretty good. Let’s not mince words here. They’re just talking an incredible large game without really having proven much. They’ve got a quarterback that finished one spot ahead of Kerryon in the Heisman voting, and an opportunistic defense that forces turnovers left and right. If you watched the AAC Championship Game at all, you would’ve seen the Knight receivers running free all game long.
They just haven’t played anyone like us yet. I have a feeling they’re intoxicated by the recency bias. They saw a tired Auburn team get overpowered by an angry Georgia team. What they should be looking at is the Auburn team that dominated — dominated — #1 Georgia and #1 Alabama by double digits in the span of fifteen days.
We’ll see. Happy New Year, everyone, and War Eagle! Hope to see you all in Atlanta to help ring in 2018 with a victory!