The national stakes are diminished for this year's Iron Bowl but the pressure to win is real for both sides.
First-year Alabama coach Kalen DeBoer is already in charge of the worst Crimson Tide team since 2010 and really can't afford an Iron Bowl loss to a six-loss Auburn team. No. 13 Alabama (8-3) still has a scant hope of making the College Football Playoff if chaos unfolds this weekend, but even taking that off the table, a four-loss first season would be disastrous for DeBoer and his ability to elicit long-term buy-in from a fanbase accustomed to competing for, and ideally winning, national championships each year.
Losses to unranked Vanderbilt and Oklahoma shocked the system. The 24-3 loss to Oklahoma last weekend, which essentially knocked the Tide out of the playoff race, was Alabama's largest loss to an unranked opponent since 1998 when Mike DuBose was head coach. This year's Alabama team has delivered incredible highs like a thrilling home win over Georgia and a dominant road win inside Tiger Stadium, but opposing coaches have pointed to inconsistent intensity and approach as one reason for the Tide's rollercoaster season.
"They are not what they had been, but that's the most talented team we played," an opposing SEC coach said. "They are the most talented team we saw on tape; them beating Georgia was no fluke. If they would play with that intensity, that's who they are."
At Auburn, second-year coach Hugh Freeze is coming off a four-overtime win over Texas A&M, a rare highlight in a season that quickly went off the rails. Freeze's stubbornness and ego to not pursue a transfer quarterback doomed the Tigers' hopes this season, but it has still gone far worse than anyone could have imagined. Before the A&M win, Auburn specialized in finding new and painful ways to blow games it should have won. Losses to Oklahoma and Missouri were particularly brutal.
Freeze was largely hired for his ability to beat Nick Saban -- a feat he accomplished twice while at Ole Miss – and while that's impossible now, a win over Saban's replacement would buy him a lot of goodwill ahead of what is shaping into a critical third season for him on the Plains. He is recruiting at a very high level as Auburn currently has the nation's No. 5 recruiting class, but he has frustrated some boosters with his time spent on the golf course. When things aren't going well as they obviously haven't this season, the optics of being on the golf course the day after a loss aren't great.
And, yet, Freeze still has a good power base of supporters.
The most powerful Auburn boosters wanted Freeze in 2020 instead of eventual hire Bryan Harsin and were told no. After less than two years of the failed Harsin experiment, they got their wish. It's why even though Freeze has fared no better than Harsin on the football field, he hasn't faced the same pressure as his predecessor. Harsin was ultimately fired after only 23 games. Still, there is real frustration over the minimal return on investment thus far that can make it difficult to raise NIL funds and continue to recruit at a high level if the results on the field don't change.
The Iron Bowl is always a stressful experience for the coaches involved. Former Auburn coach Tommy Tuberville led the Tigers to six consecutive wins over the Crimson Tide, a streak no one has matched since not even Saban. But after a blowout 36-0 loss to Alabama in 2008 that marked a changing of the guard, that was the end of his time leading Auburn.
"I promise you the Iron Bowl is not for coaches," Tuberville, now a U.S. Senator, recently said. "It's for fans and for players. As a coach, you've got the weight of all your fans on your shoulders and you just can't wait to get it over with, you know, one way or the other."
The weight is especially heavy for the coaches this season. There is a desperate need on both sides to come up victorious on Saturday. DeBoer has never played in an Iron Bowl, but has the benefit of getting his first one at home rather than trying to combat the voodoo magic of Jordan-Hare Stadium. Freeze came up just short a year ago in a devastating 27-24 loss on Jalen Milroe's 4th-and-31 touchdown pass to Isaiah Bond.
"There's no bigger game on the schedule," Freeze said this week. "To sit in this seat and lose one like we did last year, it still doesn't sit right. And I know that the Auburn faithful have had to endure that, and we want to change that feeling in this building, for our fanbase and this state."
Even if the national championship implications are off the table this year, the coach who wins Saturday will have much friendlier interactions with his fanbase over the next year than the one who comes up short. There's been more to gain in this rivalry's history, but there's not usually this much to lose.