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Inside the Auburn Tigers Daniels, who played three seasons at Stanford before transferring to Auburn this offseason, could exhaust his college eligibility should he play in both of Auburn football's final two regular-season games . . . "The Auburn players play with a lot of fire . . . "We have probably had conversations with 7 or 8 sitting head coaches . . . "We still have student-athletes, high school recruits that are dying to come to Auburn. And so that evaluation process is ongoing; still with our current roster, that evaluation process is ongoing. And so we're looking for guys that want to be here . . . It makes this season even more frustrating wondering what the Tigers would have looked like with 10 more carries in each game for the talented junior . . . They will need to win those final two games and a bowl game to avoid five consecutive losing seasons . . . Why has the Auburn offense been bottled up all season, and what led to them scoring the most offensive points that they have scored all season? . . . A question mark that arises for Auburn at the quarterback position is whether it is worth potentially preserving Ashton Daniels' redshirt status by not playing him against Mercer and starting true freshman quarterback Deuce Knight . . . Cam Coleman may not be human . . . Offensive coordinator Derrick Nix took over play-calling duties for the first time in Freeze's absence, and Auburn totaled 563 yards of offense and scored the most points since its season opener at Baylor . . . Auburn outgained Vandy in the game 563-544 . . . "Our guys never flinched. To the last play, they battled . . . Durkin's defense struggled to contain Vanderbilt star quarterback Diego Pavia, who accounted for 489 total yards and four touchdowns . . . A high-scoring offensive shootout between the Commodores and an uncharacteristically fierce Auburn offense ended on a critical endzone drive in overtime . . . Auburn's Ashton Daniels tied it up at 38-all by throwing a 23-yard TD pass to Cam Coleman before finding Coleman again for a 2-point conversion with 5:27 left . . . With the loss, Auburn is now 4-6 on the season and 1-6 in SEC play . . . Critical defensive failures were the "difference in the game . . . The Tigers responded under interim coach DJ Durkin and never backed down . . . Auburn-Vanderbilt stats . . . When your offense scores 37.6 points per game and converts 11 of 17 fourth-down attempts, punting opportunities are limited . . . Auburn enters this matchup knowing it is a turning point that could define the rest of its season . . . "Our guys have got to do a better job of locking into what we're putting in offensively, because each week, teams are going to do something different defensively that we've got to be able to exploit . . . In the previous 20 years, no Auburn player has had 69 tackles, 14 tackles for loss and seven sacks in a single season . . . Pavia will challenge every level of the Auburn defense on Saturday. It's something that Durkin said they are very aware of . . . "There are three receivers on that field that are among the best we've played . . . Keldric Faulk, regardless of where you line him up, is the best player on the field. Stats can say what they wish, but from a pure talent standpoint, no one on Vanderbilt's offensive line is close. With that said, Auburn could tilt the trench warfare in this matchup by consistently moving Faulk around . . . The all-time series between the schools is tied 22-22-1. The Commodores are 12-8 in home games . . . Vanderbilt is 0-2 when it fails to get past 135 rushing yards. South Alabama is the only other team to get past that on the Tiger D, and it only got to 140 . . . While the Commodores can get pressure, that's increasingly required blitzing as we've gotten deeper into league play . . . Durkin has been a head coach before — and he was also an interim coach at Florida. But being thrown into the role is never easy . . . Running back Jeremiah Cobb added how things are trending upward around the facility under Durkin and says the team's goal of winning has not changed. "The energy is still the same. We still have the same mission . . . For now, Durkin wants to keep things the same to avoid major changes in the middle of the season . . . He beat the Tigers as the quarterback at New Mexico State in 2022 and last season in his first year at Vanderbilt . . . "Auburn has the alignment that LSU doesn't have. That Arkansas doesn't have right now and even Florida doesn't have right now," Burns said. "Great fanbase, great facilities . . . "If Key isn't a top target for Auburn, the school's doing this wrong . . .
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