Joel Klatt outlines Auburn's chances to make the College Football Playoff

On his most recent show, Joel Klatt named three teams from the Southeastern Conference who could be surprise entries this year into the College Football Playoff. Among those teams listed? The Auburn Tigers.

Klatt named those playoff sleepers across the country during his show on Wednesday. It took some more consideration in the SEC, but in the end, Klatt could not quite put Auburn fully into the field.

“It’s a little bit harder to do this because everybody in the SEC is ranked, right. So, I’ve got one ranked team on here. There’s a few others that, you know, people have dabbled with ranking them at one point or another,” Klatt said. “Here’s the three teams that I’m going to talk about. I want to talk about Auburn, Oklahoma, and Missouri.”

Looking at the Tigers, Klatt explained some reasons as to why this fall should be better than the previous two, having gone 11-14 overall in that time and taking a step back last season at 5-7 under Hugh Freeze. That said, those reasons were all enough to think that there’s some real expectations to be at least in the playoff periphery this year down on The Plains.

“Let me tell you why I considered Auburn,” Klatt began. “Auburn – did you know last year they had the most starts by freshmen of anybody in the Power Four? So, this 5-7 season was, in a large context, a learning year and a building year and a development year for Auburn. Can they and will they improve on that? Well, absolutely they can. And, will they? Probably.

“They bring in the quarterback, Jackson Arnold, from Oklahoma. Can he be better in Huge Freeze’s offense than he was last year in Oklahoma’s offense? He’ll have two really good weapons in wide receivers Cam Coleman and Eric Singleton. So, I like those things. They’ve got a fun game against Baylor to start, at Baylor and Baylor is an excellent team…The SEC schedule for them is manageable. They get Georgia and Alabama at home. You look at their schedule, you look at their roster, you look at what they’ve been able to develop? I think that there’s some pressure on Auburn.”

However, to that point, Klatt thinks Auburn has enough to improve but not enough to be that much better, especially being in the SEC. He can see a projection where Auburn wins more games but, likely needing to get to double-digit victories, meaning doubling the win total from last season.

“5-7 into the playoffs is a huge jump,” Klatt said. “Why do I not like Auburn? Because that is a huge jump. And, in particular, in that conference, it’s hard to make a jump because I think that the margin between the great teams in the SEC and the teams in the middle of the pack in the SEC are bigger than in most conferences, okay. So, for them to jump, I think it’s going to be tougher, much tougher. Do they need to get to 10-2 to get in? Probably. Why? Because 9-3 is likely not going to cut it. Can they be 10-2 with their schedule? Don’t love that. Don’t love that.”