Pete Thamel addresses chances Bryan Harsin gets fired this weekend, challenge in doing so

The tumultuous relationship regarding Bryan Harsin at Auburn has been fascinating to watch play out, and it certainly hasn’t yielded the results the Tigers are looking for.

Evidently, Pete Thamel is thinking it’s on it’s way to a divorce, but he’s not willing to go as far as trying to get inside Auburn decision-maker’s heads. Still, the ESPN analyst addressed the chances Harsin gets fired this weekend, and the challenge in doing so.

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“Predicting Auburn when you don’t know who’s in charge, is always a little bit dangerous. I think there’s a really good chance if the result is lopsided. I mean, they’ve become kind of a caricature of themselves at this point at Auburn, because it is a matter of when Bryan Harsin gets fired at Auburn, not if,” stated Thamel. “There have been — there was a window last week to do it, especially after the way the play calling went in the second half. They passed.

“The interesting part of the dynamics of firing Bryan Harsin is that he’s the play caller, and there’s no obvious interim on staff. So, do you make (Secondary Coach/Associate Head Coach) Zac Etheridge the head coach, who’s kind of one of your young Auburn guys who, I would say, sometimes guys do this like at USC, may save the recruiting class, or to keep recruiting momentum going. Maybe the worst recruiting class in the SEC. So that doesn’t seem to be a factor, but like, you still have to coach six games at this point. That’s a long time. There’s some pretty high leverage games left. That’s not a place that just wants to wave the flag.”

In addition to trying to figure out whether Harsin will get fired, Thamel spoke about another challenge in firing the Auburn coach — the fact that the staff is filled with Harsin’s guys.

“I don’t know the staff well enough to know who would call plays, and they’re all his guys. Like, Harsin doubled down on himself after the coup attempt last year, and I get it. But the way the staff was redesigned, it was people he was comfortable with, so that dynamic is interesting too,” added Thamel. “There’s only, there’s two or three kind of outsiders, but the rest of them are — maybe a little more than two or three, but not many — the rest of them are hardcore guys.”

Indisputably, there likely ins’t a long-term future for Bryan Harsin at Auburn at this point, barring a miracle. Still, unless there’s an absolute disaster this weekend against Georgia, Pete Thamel won’t dare try to figure out what the Tigers are thinking.