“Good morning. Let me start by saying that, man, Saturday hurt our kids, our staff, and I’m sure it hurt our incredible fans, who – to have five straight home games to open the season – they’ve been just marvelous. Our students, our band, our cheerleaders, they’ve been incredible. And I’m sure they were hurt, just like our kids felt gutted, staff and everybody a part of it. We’re judged on results, and it’s my responsibility to bring results to this program that restore its glory, that not only restores the glory of the Auburn football team on the field, but also I firmly believe that part of my job is to build up Auburn men. That is one thing that I do believe and see occurring even through the hardships that we’re going through, and it’s something that we take very seriously. When you talk to them, I feel like we’re accomplishing good things there. Now, obviously, we want to add to not only building up men first, but returning the glory to Auburn football. We’re working tirelessly to do both, truthfully. That’s why I teach truth lessons on Monday and Thursday about life, the lessons we can learn from the game of football for that.

“Our fan base has done their part, which makes not being 5-0 very hard to swallow. We certainly had our chances to do that. My ask is to stick with us through the growing pains and support our guys and efforts and our recruiting efforts, because the results are going to come. We’re not that far off. And hope the ‘25 recruiting class sees that and knows they have a chance to come in and immediately impact this program, just like the ‘24 class is currently doing. But building does take time. I think you all are aware of what we inherited. Our AD has done a marvelous job of explaining that. He did to me before I took the job, with the previous recruiting classes not being what you need to compete at a high level. And 57 transfers out in the previous three years before my arrival. So building takes time. But our process, when complete, is going to make everyone very, very proud to wear the orange and blue. It’s making ground, the process is. I see it. The record doesn’t reflect it, even when playing 12 freshmen and a combination of the 49 guys that played Saturday, there were 24, if you count our kicker, 24 freshmen and sophomores that played the majority of the snaps. And I use that for my recruiting pitch. We’ll play you early. So let’s finish this ‘25 class up and give us some more depth that we need to compete in this great conference.

“We must continue to get better in every facet, and that’s my job, including coaching situational football better, putting our players in the best possible situations for their abilities to provide them success. It doesn’t really matter if I think something’s a great call, great decision, if it doesn’t match up with the capabilities of our young men, I can’t put them in those situations. And I told our players postgame that I couldn’t be more proud of them, their effort, their preparation. They deserved to win that game, and they played their guts out. I can’t fault a single play on that film on effort. And I told our staff that honestly, it’s one of the better game plans that a staff has put together in my time. The offensive guys under coach (Derrick) Nix and Kent (Austin) and Jake (Thornton) and Ben (Aigamaua) and Marcus (Davis) and obviously all the supporting staff. I thought the plan was excellent. Thought the plan on defense was excellent, and I was proud of both the players and the staffs. It was a really good plan.

“There are many positives to build from, from that game. If you look at 90% of the plays, there’s a lot of really, really good things that I hope can carry over as we get ready for a top ranked team in Georgia. We certainly can’t let the hurt and the sting of losing a game that you feel like you should have won tarry too long because we’ve got some very tough tasks facing us voming up with two top 10 teams on the road. October is a road challenge for us, we haven’t experienced that yet. And again, as we mentioned earlier, we’re playing about 50% of our guys are young guys, and they haven’t experienced what we’re getting ready to experience. So that’s going to be a challenge for us, but one that that we’re looking forward to, excited to do. Some great positives from Saturday. Demarcus Riddick led us in tackles. True freshmen, (Malcolm) Simmons and (Cam) Coleman combined for almost 150 yards receiving. Offense had 26 first downs, I believe, almost 500 yards of offense. Defense held them to 290 yards, 2-for-11 on third downs, which is a huge improvement from the previous weeks on our third down work. It’s just frustrating to sit here and tell you all that and to know what the results are.

“That’s the complicated thing, taking ownership of that and still pointing out the positives. Offensively, we’re number three in the conference for fewest penalties, number five in the conference for passing, number one in the conference for explosive pass plays per completion. Number eight in total offense, five yards per carry. You know, just there’s a lot of positives that are not matching up with the results. There’s some negatives, too. We’re 16^th in the conference in time of possession. We’re 16th and turnover margin. You know, that’s the things that have really, really cost us. We lost the three games we lost an average of 7.7 points in those games and have had 11 turnovers. So there’s a lot of positives to build upon and extremely proud of the effort that our kids and staff gave to prepare for a really good football team in Oklahoma, particularly defensively. They’re one of the best. Thankful again for our wonderful fans and their support.  Now we’ve got to get ready for a very difficult Georgia team who’s loaded with talent and experience and maturity and obviously well-coached. Great respect for Kirby (Smart), the job he’s done and the classes he’s stacked there make them one of the nation’s elite.”