To answer the original question, I think it's probably due to a few factors:
1) Jordan-Hare is legitimately a tough place to play; it's very loud and has that enormous, ultra-bright scoreboard that I think can be distracting for opposing teams that aren't used to it.
2) Auburn probably does dedicate some practice time for the Iron Bowl starting 3-4 weeks in advance, whereas I think we legitmately treat it as "the next game", as we do most of our games.
3) Dating back to the 1990s Auburn has, more often than not, employed either a head coach, offensive coordinator or defensive coordinator that has been able to scheme things into this game that give us fits. In the 1990s it was Tommy Bowden as OC sprinkling in spread concepts; later on they had Al Borges and his "Gulf Coast" offense scheming guys open in the passing game. Then of course all of the craziness of the Malzahn years. In 2021 Derek Mason was their DC and managed to stonewall our offense for 3.5 quarters. This year, Hugh Freeze and his knack for scheming running lanes and passing plays that work against our defense. For the better part of the last three decades, Auburn has mostly hired coaches - either as head coach or coordinators - who are known for either running quirky schemes or being gambling risk takers. The times that they've tried to play more traditional football it hasn't worked out too well for them (2012 under Chizk being the best example I can think of).
4) I don't have statistics and everyone likes to complain about this, but it seems like the officiating we get down there is almost always dubious. Did Auburn get flagged for holding at all Saturday? I don't recall that they did, and what are the odds of that when you run the ball 42 times for 244 yards?
If you take all of the above into account, it's not surprising that we seem to struggle so often down there. Conversely, there have really only been two truly close games in Bryant-Denny during Saban's tenure and they were in 2010 and 2014, when pretty much everyone was still struggling to contain Malzahn's offense and they had elite talent at the skill positions.
1) Jordan-Hare is legitimately a tough place to play; it's very loud and has that enormous, ultra-bright scoreboard that I think can be distracting for opposing teams that aren't used to it.
2) Auburn probably does dedicate some practice time for the Iron Bowl starting 3-4 weeks in advance, whereas I think we legitmately treat it as "the next game", as we do most of our games.
3) Dating back to the 1990s Auburn has, more often than not, employed either a head coach, offensive coordinator or defensive coordinator that has been able to scheme things into this game that give us fits. In the 1990s it was Tommy Bowden as OC sprinkling in spread concepts; later on they had Al Borges and his "Gulf Coast" offense scheming guys open in the passing game. Then of course all of the craziness of the Malzahn years. In 2021 Derek Mason was their DC and managed to stonewall our offense for 3.5 quarters. This year, Hugh Freeze and his knack for scheming running lanes and passing plays that work against our defense. For the better part of the last three decades, Auburn has mostly hired coaches - either as head coach or coordinators - who are known for either running quirky schemes or being gambling risk takers. The times that they've tried to play more traditional football it hasn't worked out too well for them (2012 under Chizk being the best example I can think of).
4) I don't have statistics and everyone likes to complain about this, but it seems like the officiating we get down there is almost always dubious. Did Auburn get flagged for holding at all Saturday? I don't recall that they did, and what are the odds of that when you run the ball 42 times for 244 yards?
If you take all of the above into account, it's not surprising that we seem to struggle so often down there. Conversely, there have really only been two truly close games in Bryant-Denny during Saban's tenure and they were in 2010 and 2014, when pretty much everyone was still struggling to contain Malzahn's offense and they had elite talent at the skill positions.
