Auburn-Georgia officiating was a mess. But it wasn’t the only reason the Tigers lost

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AUBURN, Ala. — Some booed. Other Auburn fans chose more emotive ways of showing their displeasure as the SEC officiating crew left the field through a corner tunnel at Jordan-Hare Stadium on Saturday night.

One Auburn fan leaned over the railing, waved his middle finger and yelled. Another cupped his hands and shouted invective. Another sarcastically clapped and shouted “good job.”

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When the game ended seconds earlier, there was a smattering of boos among the fans still around. The hearts and minds of those fans couldn’t be immediately read, but it’s a good bet they weren’t booing their team, even though it had lost a ninth straight game to rival Georgia, 20-10. It’s a decent bet they weren’t even booing coach Hugh Freeze, owner of a losing record in his two-plus years as Auburn’s coach, whose team had control of the game — until it lost control, after a series of calls that didn’t go its way.

“We’re better than Georgia,” Auburn receiver Preston Howard said. “We’re better than every team we’ve played. But we’ve gotta play well enough to win.”

And that gets to the crux of the issue for Auburn (3-3, 0-3 SEC), which was on the wrong end of a good case of two-things-can-be-true:

1. There were several questionable, controversial officiating calls, or non-calls, that went against Auburn.

2. The Tigers let those calls get to them and lost control of the game.

Freeze and his players basically admitted that afterward. Freeze said his team “didn’t play with the same physicality” or energy in the second half, when it was outscored 17-0 by the Bulldogs (5-1, 2-1). Howard said the calls in the final two minutes of the first half “definitely shifted the momentum,” and that his team has “to do better when adversity hits.”

The evidence is there on the stat sheet.

For the first 28 minutes of the game, it was domination one way: Auburn 228 yards, Georgia only 20. Auburn with 10 points, verging on 17.

Then came the tush-push fumble. As Auburn quarterback Jackson Arnold tried to learn across the goal line, a Georgia defender punched the football loose. There is evidence for either ruling: The one officials made, that Arnold lost control of the ball before it crossed the plane of the end zone, or the one Auburn wanted, that it did cross and should have been a touchdown, and a 17-0 lead.

“I thought he broke the plane,” Freeze said. “All you have to do is the ball, just the nose, and the ball just has to break the plane. I thought there was a pretty good shot at that. That didn’t go our way.”

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Regardless, that play marked a turning point. From then on, there was domination the other way: Georgia 276 yards, Auburn only 49.

“They probably made their halftime adjustments. Everybody has good coaches. This is the SEC,” Howard said. “But they didn’t do anything to stop us. We did that to ourselves.”

The plays immediately after the fumble illustrate that. Auburn was called for two 15-yard penalties, a targeting and a roughing the passer, and also committed an offside penalty, helping a Georgia offense that had been struggling to go downfield for a field goal.

Could there have been some residual anger at the fumble ruling? As Auburn left the field for halftime, the television cameras caught athletic director John Cohen walking with Freeze and shouting something at referee Ken Williamson.

It was Cohen who, less than three weeks ago, put out a statement after a loss at Oklahoma, which was awarded a touchdown on a play the SEC admitted should not have counted, because the Sooners used an illegal substitution. So the frustration Cohen expressed on Saturday, as well as Freeze and everyone on the team, is a buildup of several weeks’ worth.

“There’s a lot of times I make bad calls, and officials do the same,” Freeze said Saturday. “But it sure feels like we’re not getting any breaks.”

Freeze later thought a Georgia player should have been called for targeting on a hit against Howard. It cost Freeze a timeout trying to get a review, but it didn’t get the desired result.

Then there was the Kirby Smart non-timeout. Georgia was ahead 13-10 and driving, but facing third down and the play clock winding down. Officials stopped play, at first saying Smart called timeout, then waving off the timeout, saying Smart had only been clapping — although cameras appeared to show him making a timeout signal.

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“They should have had a delay of game or a timeout, not a whole new play,” Freeze said. “I’m not sure what happened there.”

Smart told reporters that he wasn’t calling timeout and was trying to tell officials that Auburn was simulating the snap.

“I didn’t need a timeout because we were going to get it off before the shot clock,” Smart said. “I wanted them to call it because it’s a penalty.”

It didn’t end up mattering — Georgia was called for an illegal block on the next play and missed a field goal — but it still served as an example for what Auburn people, and many on social media, thought was a one-sided officiating performance.

Perhaps it was. Perhaps it did bail out a Georgia team that once again did not play very well, yet once again found a way to win.

Or perhaps it all illustrated why Georgia has still been winning and Auburn has not. Georgia has now failed to have a halftime lead in nine of its past 10 power-conference games. But it has come back to win six of those games. It won the SEC championship in that fashion last year when Gunner Stockton came off the bench to beat Texas in overtime. The same Stockton who was clutch down the stretch on Saturday night. On the game-clinching drive in the fourth quarter, he completed three passes on third down, another on fourth down, and on the final third down of the drive ran for the touchdown.

Auburn, meanwhile, has lost eight of its past 10 SEC games, seven of the losses by 10 points or less. Winnable games where different things went wrong.

In the past three games — at Oklahoma, at Texas A&M, Georgia — there was one commonality: 90-plus penalty yards against the Tigers. That was pointed out to Freeze, who nodded.

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“We’re finding ways not to win games,” Freeze said. “I’m certainly not saying I agree with all of (the penalties), I probably don’t. But it’s still way too many. Those are things that will cost you close games.”

They have, and they did again. Auburn can blame the calls all they want. But when Georgia was on the bad end of a controversial call last year at Texas, it didn’t wilt. It still won the game.

Auburn had a similar chance to respond well to a bad break. It failed. The Tigers can blame the officials for the calls. For what happened after those calls, they can only blame themselves.

This news was originally published on this post .

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