and here we go with a preview of the Auburn verse Texas A&M gam it's going to be played on the PLS in Auburn this weekend it will be probably one of the easier tests in my opinion that Auburn will face uh so far in the year and let's talk a little bit about Auburn with a quick recap um one of the things that really stands out is Auburn's offense you know their first and the SEC in third down cond conversions over 50% believe it's 58% of the time they convert on third Town they're doing very very well in that category as well and their Red Zone scoring percentage continues to be huge with the majority of those being a touchdown so not only they rank high in the league uh they rank high in the nation so the Auburn offense which I think really started jelling in the last two weeks and really firing on all eight cylinders in part I think because just the way the process of the Season works but in part I think because of some wrinkles that Gus maon and red Lashley have put into that offense um you're seeing a lot more AC ity different looks and mixups and changes in the back field um we've seen Ricardo Lewis come across on jet sweeps a lot that's one of the new wrinkles that we've seen um some uh bubble screens fakes and things like that and uh you combine all that together and then I think the other thing probably is the offensive line who we knew would have issues from the beginning of the year is really starting to Jael and come and come forward I think um with the substitutions we had to make thing here with the injuries um uh you knew it was going to take a little while I think it probably took longer than we expected but if you watch that Old Miss game you saw I wouldn't say that Auburn forced its will upon the offense defensive front um the entire game but there was certainly a good portion of the game where they just really moved the line they just powered through and moved the line which is something that we had really been waiting to see and we'll talk quickly about this much maligned Auburn defense and look I'm the first to jump on board and malign the Auburn defense don't get me wrong um but let's think about things that they do well um which people don't talk about and in my opinion this is why uh Auburn has continued to win games um the first of those would be a third down defense they rank number one uh in the league in third down defense they're getting you off the field on third down better than anybody else in the SEC this is the SEC by the way um so you don't talk about Auburn's defense in terms of being really vaunted in the SEC but when you look at things that matter they rank very very well they also rank very two in R number two in red zone defense so um sure uh Auburn has given up a lot of yards some games more than others but pretty much against any reasonable offense they've given up a lot of yards but what they haven't done is allowed uh huge scoring opportunities in the Red Zone they're very good on that again number two in the SEC and then on third down they're ranked number one in the SEC on third down so on third down more than likely or not you're going off the field you're not going to continue going um and that that statistic actually shocked me a little bit because um I didn't think Auburn was doing that well on third down so kind of changed my opinion on that but let's think about it you can give up a lot of yards you can let people march down the field but ultimately when they get into the Red Zone if they don't convert that to touchdowns or they don't convert at all um all those yards are meaningless it's meaningless yards um what it does though is of course it tires out your defense um but this defense has come up big in the fourth quarter um especially if you look at the uh the opposing team scoring offense in the fourth quarter compared to the first second and third quarter pretty much like the Auburn team that we saw in the championship year and the the Auburn team that we saw last year it just seems to be a knack they've had I'm starting to hear whispers about Ellis Johnson's got to go I'm not really sure that's the case um it has been frustrating at times because it's simple things it's the inability to tackle um some of that's been bad angles a couple of those uh in the m Old Miss game were just really bad angles and a couple of times they were in position and then just got blown off the tackle um by some really great blocks or a better move by Defenders so or or rather the offense so um you know I think it's things that are fixable eh it's something you'd like to see improved though so down to the stats we go we've rambled on enough so we've put these stats up every week we compare home game stats for the home game team versus Road stats for the road team team to come up with these we've been very very accurate I'll say this nobody was happier than me than that than us being wrong about the Old Miss game because it showed Auburn losing in a very close game um but most of the other times rest of the Year this has come up pretty well so let's check it out um just running total uh statistics of what we would expect the score to be um we're showing Auburn putting up 44 points um which is is pretty huge 44 points on at home I think that's very doable um Auburn is a 40-point offense um especially at home and especially when you have a mediocre or a poor defense so uh you can expect to score in the 40s and then on the other hand this A&M offense which is sputtered at times and they're still trying to figure out their offense and their identity they got the quarterback issues as well um still the statistics show them putting up 30 points so they should be able to score why um a lot of that is because um things that we've talked about with the Auburn defense even though they're good in some areas they're still giving up points they're giving up yards um we should expect Auburn to be able to do what they do putting up over 250 and rushing I think that would be good they could put up uh 250 and rushing um I think you would see uh um I think you would see probably a winning game any anything over 250 I think you get in the 200 category starts to be an Nifty but 250 um I think they do very well and I think that's the key to the game so that's a score prediction from the stats we got Auburn at home scoring 44 Over Texas A&M 30 we'll see how our stats fair this week since we have Auburn on top unlike last week where we did Auburn losing I'm really pulling for the statistics to be correct