Golesh owns Auburn's flat offensive plan after 38-17 loss to LSU, with Ole Miss up next

One week after winning in Athens, Auburn came back to Jordan-Hare Stadium and lost 38-17 to No. 18 LSU. Head coach Alex Golesh made no attempt to soften it. "There's no silver lining. There's no anything. That was bad in every imaginable way," Golesh said, according to Roundtable Sports.

Golesh put the offensive problems on himself. He told reporters the staff didn't find enough creative ways to run the ball and said he owned the plan in full. The numbers back him up. Auburn ran for just 67 yards, punted seven times and could not keep Byrum Brown clean. ABC 33/40 counted six sacks of Brown. Brown's 1-yard touchdown run in the second quarter got Auburn within 17-10, and that was as close as it got.

The defense was no better. LSU finished with 552 yards, 346 of them before halftime. Sam Leavitt threw for 387 yards and three touchdowns, and Jackson Harris caught nine passes for 178 yards and two scores, including a 70-yard touchdown that answered Brown's run right away. Leavitt then scored on a short run before the break to make it 31-10. Golesh said missed tackles were the main problem, with short completions that should have gained four or five yards going for nine or ten. He called the day the low point of a season that has already had its high point.

The loss drops Auburn to 4-3 overall and 2-3 in the SEC. LSU moves to 6-2 and hosts No. 10 Alabama on November 7.

What it means at Ole Miss

Auburn has to fix the same problems on the road at No. 12 Ole Miss on Saturday, October 31 (SEC Network). The Rebels are 5-2 and coming off a 34-27 loss at No. 19 Texas. Before that, they beat No. 13 Missouri 31-3 and won 52-17 at Vanderbilt. They have also beaten LSU 32-24 this season, which is more than Auburn managed. Ole Miss has scored at least 27 points in six of its seven games. That is a tough matchup for a defense that just gave up 38 points and a stream of yards after the catch.

Auburn's season has swung hard from week to week. The Tigers beat Georgia 27-24 on the road and lost 24-14 at Tennessee. Their two other losses came against LSU and Florida, by a combined 26 points. They have shown they can win a game like this, but they haven't done it consistently.

The market expects Ole Miss to win comfortably. On this site's board, which tracks 11 venues, Ole Miss is favored by 12.5 points at Novig, priced at -108. Auburn +12.5 is -104 there. The best number anywhere for Auburn is +13.5 at DraftKings (-110). On the moneyline, Novig has Ole Miss at -456 and Auburn at +413, and theScore Bet has the best Auburn price at +425. Spread hold at the sportsbooks runs from 3.8% to 7.0%, so the venues differ by about a point on the spread and a few dollars on the moneyline. The total is 57.5 at Novig, about what you would expect when one team's defense just gave up 552 yards and the other team's offense rarely gets held down.

Golesh said his team can't spend the week dwelling on what happened against LSU. Against Ole Miss, Auburn will need a better plan for running the ball than the one he took the blame for.