I think it will be very similar to dye and tubs first years. They'll play their hearts out and be much improved but the fact is they are behind the 8 ball as compared to the top 5 sec teams right now. It will be a good foundation building year which is what most of these players need. They need to learn how to play football and again and a get few quality wins.
All of the folks talking about new/better attitude, wanting to win, in better shape, better coached...all true in my opinion. You will see a positive difference there. Those things won't help us beat clearly superior teams on our schedule. We have 8 games that we CAN win IMHO. I mean 8 where we play teams that are not clearly physically superior teams going in to the season. However, even of we are improved, and play to the best of our ability, one glaring weakness remains which can help an equal, or slightly less than equal team overcome us, and that is the QB position. It's that key. People can distort their defense to stop the one or two things you can do if you're not a threat to hurt them in other areas. IE, if we can't throw the ball AT ALL...we won't be able to run it nearly as effectively, even if we have blocking and a good RB. We've all seen that.
If the young QB shows some ability to make defenses respect his arm...then things may change. That said, at this time, there's no team on our schedule that I think is a "good" team, but one we could beat on a good day. Bammer, UGA aTm, and LSU are superior teams. (LSU lost a lot, and may be overrated, yet still very talented) Of the other 8, 4 are SEC teams, 2 with new coaches, and there's lots of unknowns there. By the time we get to UT and Ark. things may have changed drastically for us or them.
Auburn though, like you said, it's shaping up to be like when Dye and Tubs took over. Lots of holes to fill, and it will take a year or 2, but we should see great improvement in the play, though the talent may prevent us from winning as many as it will take to make some folks happy.