Auburn football (Photo by John E. Moore III/Getty Images)
Any hopeful expectation that Auburn football can be a seven or eight-win team rests on the shoulders of two different groups on different sides of the ball.
The first group is Bryan Harsin’s first backfield. Bo Nix, Tank Bigsby, and (to a lesser degree) Shaun Shivers will need to elevate their play further to keep the Tigers competitive in a strengthened SEC West. While Alabama should take a step back from the historic level of play they maintained in 2020 with their five top-20 NFL Draft picks this past April, Texas A&M, and LSU could take major steps forward on the strength of their defense.