The thing that upsets me about this team is that it reminds me very much of 2003. We had high expectations. That year we blew it from the start. This year we felt good, but reached sky-high limits after destroying an LSU defense that has pretty much shut everybody else in the world down.
I'll be honest. After we skullfucked LSU and I saw how badly A&M played, how flawed MSU was (and is), how vulnerable Alabama was (and is) and how weak SC turned out to be I truly thought we'd methodically grind our way unbeaten into the Iron Bowl. I figured Bama would have two losses by then. I expected the Ole Miss loss and really thought Arkansas or LSU would tag them too (both should have, but Bama is the luckiest team in the history of the universe).
We have the talent. We got the benefit of the doubt from the committee. So, again, I (and I think most of us) bought in yet again. After 2003 I damn sure didn't completely buy in back in 2004. Didn't want to get burned again. I didn't buy in back in 2010 until the very end. I kept thinking something had to break, we were so close in seemingly every game. I didn't buy in last year because, well, we weren't supposed to be there. Every game was a happy surprise.
And then this year. It was all right there in front of us. We looked invulnerable on offense, we seemed to have found a comfortable groove on defense. And then we seemed to get complacent. Defense started half assing. Offense played well, but only when it absolutely had to. We let a Mississippi State team we should have broken escape with some really sloppy play. Then we let a really bad Texas A&M team run over us because, in my opinion, our players saw the point spread, saw what Alabama did to them and figured all we had to do was show up. Instead we fucked up.
That hangover (and perhaps some internal finger pointing) carried over to the Georgia game. And we fucked the entire season.
Is this a bad team? Nope. The team that mauled LSU is still out there somewhere. That team would beat Alabama like a rented mule. The Tide are as vulnerable as they've been in seven years. They don't have a quarterback, there are big holes to exploit on defense. They can be stopped, easily. But I don't know if the coaching staff can bring the Auburn team that dominated LSU back. That's the challenge.
All isn't lost, but we are staring at the abyss right now. We shit the bed once again and we'll be back in the same position we were several years ago where we have to "prove" ourselves all over again. We'd climbed that mountain already (See the committee rankings early on). We don't need to fall so far that we create that perpetual doubt again.
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