AUBURN, Ala. – It was close to the same time last season that Auburn could have given up. The Tigers had just lost their second game at LSU, and the chances of winning the division, the conference or making the College Football Playoff seemed slim at best. Nobody outside the complex gave them much of a chance.
But that team didn't give up. They responded the next week with a 52-20 win at Arkansas and ripped off five straight wins to finish the regular season. They won the West and played in the SEC championship game.
This season? It's not all that different. Auburn just lost its second game of the season at Mississippi State and is now 4-2 at the midway point.
"What I want to see from this team that I saw from last year's team was we answered the bell pretty quickly," Auburn linebacker Deshaun Davis said. "We took that second loss to LSU, and the next day at practice, everyone was like, 'All right, let's do it. We can't have any more slip ups. We can't have any more mistakes. There's no more time for my bad or I'll do it next time. It's we got to do it now. There's no more times for mistakes.'
"The team that I want to see show up is a hungry team that has each other's back."
What kept last year's team together even in the face of adversity was the leadership. It didn't matter what was being said about the program after that loss to LSU. The leaders made sure they kept the outside noise on the outside and turned the focus internally.
That responsibility this year falls in the hands of players like Davis, Jarrett Stidham and Ryan Davis – the team's three captains through the first six games this season.
"First and foremost, it starts with the leadership," Deshaun said. "Guys like myself, Jarrett, Ryan Davis, we have to come out, we have to bring energy, we have to be on our P's and Q's and set a standard and say 'We're not giving up. We're not throwing in the towel. We're going to continue to fight.' The rest of those guys are going to follow us.
"So the rest of this season, I really feel like is on our shoulders. How we handle this adversity with all the naysayers and negative energy – how we tune that out is how the team is going to tune that out. If we let it come in the locker room, then everyone else is going to let it come in the locker room. So how the guys who are the leaders who the other guys look up to – how they handle it is how the team is going to handle it."
The focus now turns to Tennessee on Saturday because Auburn is not going to win six games in a row if it can't win the first one. It was the same way last year. The Tigers took it one game at a time – first Arkansas, then Texas A&M, then No. 1 Georgia and Louisiana Monroe before finishing up with a win over No. 1 Alabama in the Iron Bowl.
The only difference last year was that the Georgia and Alabama games were at home, and this year they're both on the road.
"Before we played Washington the first game of the season when we came to fall camp, we knew we had a tough schedule," Deshaun said. "It is what it is. It is what you make it in this situation. Right now you have to take one game at a time."
"Obviously, we've lost two games in the West, but there's still a lot of ball left to play this year," added Stidham. "And we were kind of sitting in this same spot last year – a lot of people counting us out. But this team is really resilient. We're going to find a way to improve every week, and we're just going to take it one game at a time, one week at a time, and not get too far ahead of ourselves."
Greg Ostendorf is a Senior Writer for AuburnTigers.com. Follow him on Twitter: @greg_ostendorf
'Not giving up' - Auburn captains step up in face of adversity
