It's always nice when a national expert picks the Auburn Tigers.

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Yes, welcome on into Locked on Auburn, your daily Auburn Tigers podcast. I'm your host, Zach Blackerby, and thank you so much for making Lockdown Auburn, your first listen every single day. Jake Crane of Crane and Company joining from the studio. You look fantastic. You look fantastic. Yeah, man, look. I thought I'd do the first one, first Auburn game that I'm on with you from here. Because I'm feeling, look, I'm feeling confident, which is scary. All the Auburn fans out there know exactly what I mean when it's like I feel pretty good about it, which in the back of my mind makes me think it's going to be a disaster. But again, like we talked about putting on a brave face, I actually don't feel too bad about it.

Yeah. in the back of my mind makes me think it's going to be a disaster but again i like we talked about

putting on a brave face i actually don't feel too bad about it uh yeah yeah just got done watching

you and your brother and cone's preview of of auburn and baylor two of you guys picked

auburn cone picked baler because he's just uh he's a hater that's who he is that's okay um I mean

there's so much at stake here yeah and it's not that Auburn couldn't achieve

some of their goals that are still in front of them if they drop this game on

Friday but man it gets it gets significantly tougher if they drop this one

well you know what's funny you we have Texas playing Ohio State. You have LSU playing

Clemson. We got all these big games around the country, but I think I can make the argument as far as

importance to a program's health in the near term and long term, that this Auburn Baylor game

could possibly be the most important one. When you look at all that's gone off on off the field with

Hugh Freeze in this off season with everything he's being saying everything he's said being taken

out of context the golf stuff the recruiting stuff because it hasn't worked out on the field

and this is year three and in year three you got to show proof of concept on the field

and you know this is a good litmus test to get some momentum going.

Because at the end of the day, football is a game of momentum. And if you lose this one, then you look at that stretch of the next full where including on the road at Oklahoma, on the road at A&M.

It could get real, real dangerous if you drop this one. But Zack, Auburn's got a better roster than Baylor. And at the end of the day, you should beat teams that you're better than. And to me, like, that's the biggest argument I've seen for Auburn. But it's so easy to say, like, well, you had a better roster against Cal. You had a better roster against Arkansas. on the day that they played, your roster, I think, was better than Oklahoma's because they were so banged up. And to me, I think that's the biggest question is, okay, Hugh Free, since he's been here, has not shown that he can consistently out-coach opponents because that wouldn't be the case. We wouldn't be in the situation we're in if he had consistently done that.

But then on the other side of it,

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