Ugly. That would be the one word to describe Auburn's performance on the road against Georgia, which dropped them to 7-3 overall and 4-3 in SEC games. This loss ended any slim hopes Auburn may have still had at winning an SEC West title and of course, any College Football Playoff chances. Now all the team can do is play out the final two regular season games, beginning at home with the Samford Bulldogs. Samford will be the fourth team nicknamed the Bulldogs Auburn will play this season. Auburn hasn't fared too well against teams with said nickname, only going 1-2. The only win over the Bulldogs for Auburn was over Louisiana Tech; which doesn't make up for blowout losses to Georgia and Mississippi State. Anyway, to get back to Samford, they enter this game 7-3 on the season and 5-2 in Southern Conference play, which places them in a tie for 2nd with Western Carolina. They hold the tiebreaker having beaten Western Carolina head-to-head. The Southern Conference is part of the FCS division, so yes, Auburn is going outside the FBS, giving in-state school Samford (located in Birmingham) a nice check to help out their athletic program in return for playing a game at Jordan-Hare Stadium. Auburn and Samford have met 27 times on the gridiron, with Auburn holding the edge 26-0-1. The lone tie came in 1927 by a score of 9-9. Most of the history between the two teams occurred from the early 1900s to mid 1940s, when they met 24 times. They've only met three times since then, the last meeting being in 2011 in which Auburn shook off a poor start en route to a 35-16 victory at Jordan-Hare Stadium.
As I just stated, Samford is 7-3 on the season. Their most recent game was a 20-17 win on the road over The Citadel in a game which Denzel Williams ran one in from two yards out with 17 seconds left in the game to give the Bulldogs the victory in what was a seesaw affair. Aside from this win, Samford owns home victories over Division II Stillman College, VMI, Mercer, Concordia and Western Carolina as well as a road victory over Furman. Their two Southern Conference losses came on the road against Chattanooga and at home against Wofford. Samford's other loss came in the season opener when they played against their only FCS opponent on the year, a 48-14 loss on the road against TCU. On offense, the Bulldogs are led by sophomore running back Denzel Williams. The sophomore back has rushed for just under 900 yards and 16 touchdowns and he's also caught 23 catches out of the backfield. Samford initially wanted him to play cornerback being that he played almost every position in high school. Funnily enough, the only position he didn't play in high school was cornerback. He seems to be more comfortable as a running back to say the least. But yes, he literally does it all. Leading receiver for these Bulldogs is another sophomore, Karel Hamilton. After catching 38 balls for 657 yards and 7 scores as a freshman, he has added 50 receptions for 810 yards and six scores as a sophomore. Both guys have proven very productive offensive players for the Bulldogs despite neither of them being highly recruited out of high school. Both of them only received scholarships from Samford as far as I can tell.
Samford's quarterback, Michael Eubank, has a much more interesting story as far as his high school recruitment was concerned. I thought I had recognized his name from some time ago, and it turns out I was right. He was a highly thought of four star recruit coming out of Centennial High School in California back in 2011. Eubank signed with Arizona State when Dennis Erickson was still coaching the Sun Devils, but with a new coach in Todd Graham being brought in as well as being behind Taylor Kelly and Mike Bercovici in the QB rotation, he decided a transfer was his best option. In transferring to an FCS school, he was eligible to play immediately and has done so as opposed to making the move to another FBS school where he would have had to sit out a year unless he would have been granted some kind of waiver that could have made him immediately eligible there. Eubank is a HUGE guy, checking in at 6'6" and weighing in at over 240 pounds. On the season, he has completed 168 passes on 260 attempts for 2020 yards, 11 TD passes and 6 interceptions. He has also added 235 yards and 5 touchdowns on the ground. So yes, the dual threat with him exists. It should be interesting to see how this offense does against an Auburn defense which has not been too good of late.
Although I certainly wouldn't expect Samford's defense to be able to keep up with Auburn's offense, they do have one very notable player garnering some NFL attention. This is senior safety,Jaquiski Tartt. This kid has had an excellent career in a Bulldog uniform. In 2012, he was a first-team All-Southern Conference and All-American selection, including being a finalist for the Buck Buchanon Award, which is given to the top defensive player in the FCS ranks. In 2013, he was again first-team All-Southern Conference along with second team All-American. If you're really into the NFL Draft process, you'll get a chance to see him play and to show what he can do against some of the best FBS players in the country in the Senior Bowl, which takes place every year in January in Mobile, Alabama as a part of the NFL Draft process. His stats for 2014 appear to be down from where they were the last couple of years. I don't know if this is because he's played injured, his level of play has dropped off, teams have been trying to avoid him or what the deal is there. He'll be the first ever Samford player to take part in the Senior Bowl, so this has to be quite the honor for him. Reading an article, it says he only played one year of football in high school, so it sounds like Samford found themselves a real diamond in the rough with him.
Okay, we all know regardless of what happens in these last two games, this one against Samford and in the Iron Bowl against Alabama, this team will have fallen well short of expectations they had of themselves and a lot of people had of them before this season began. Although Auburn is not playing at a very high level at this moment in time, they should be able to take out some frustrations they've experienced these last few weeks against a Samford team that shouldn't be able to keep up with them, especially on the defensive side of the ball. My guess is the Bulldogs are very likely to have their moments offensively with how poor the Auburn defense has looked of late, but that the Auburn offense should be able to get back on track after scoring just 7 points against Georgia and should do plenty to control this game and get the Tigers their 8th victory on the season.
My Call: Auburn 55, Samford 20
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