Bryan Harsin was an out-of-left-field hire to start with. He wasn’t who the boosters wanted – they supposedly wanted Kevin Steele (Gus Malzahn’s defensive coordinator), but word of that leaked out and there was a backlash against that, plus Steele’s 9-36 record (1-31 in-conference) in four seasons as Baylor’s head coach made him not really desired among the fan base, even though he is widely respected (rightly so) as a defensive coordinator. Then-AD Allan Greene then hired Bryan Harsin, who wasn’t on anyone’s radar as a possible hire.
Harsin was the head coach at Boise State and a Boise State alum, born and raised in Boise. He spent several years after graduating as an assistant, and other than two years as an assistant at Texas and one year as the head coach at Arkansas State, he has no experience coaching/recruiting in the south.
Year 1 started well enough – other than a tough loss to Penn State at State College and a loss to eventual national champion Georgia, things weren’t too bad – 6-2 after eight games with some good wins in there. Sure, there were things to grumble about – the offensive line was still a mess, the WR corp at times couldn’t catch a cold if you dropped ’em naked in Antarctica, and Bo Nix was a freelancer’s freelancer and could Favre up some passes, but it was hardly a disaster. Then the offense started to go off the rails – held to 3 points by Texas A&M, then blowing a 28-3 lead at home to Mississippi State, giving up 40 unanswered. Then scoring 13 points against a mediocre South Carolina team and then doing nothing in the second half against Alabama, losing in overtime and blowing probably the defense’s best game of the season. The season ended 6-7 after another anemic offensive display in losing in the Birmingham Bowl to Houston.
During the season and in the short period after, several things were becoming clear about Harsin:
- He wasn’t great at recruiting stars. Auburn wasn’t in the mix for very many 4 and 5-star players, which is kinda important if we want to compete with the Alabamas, Georgias, Clemsons, etc of the world.
- If you’re not an awesome recruiter, you’d better be an awesome coach, and some of the game situations and decisions toward the end of the season were raising questions about that.
- This had started at Boise State but came out after the season – Harsin is hard on his assistants and is a bit of an asshole, and is known for staff turnover. After the season, defensive coordinator Derek Mason (who is as great DC, professional as they come and is a very hard worker) left Auburn to take a $500,000/year pay cut to become the Oklahoma State defensive coordinator. Harsin fired offensive coordinator Mike Bobo (not necessarily an unpopular move among the fan base, but it probably played a factor in starting QB Bo Nix deciding to transfer), and hired Seattle Seahawks QB coach Austin Davis as OC. Davis lasted 43 days before he resigned “for family reasons” – this was widely interpreted, at best, as meaning that Davis had no idea how much work was done in the off-season (recruiting, development, schmoozing, etc) in college football, and he just wasn’t ready. Eventually, Harsin settled on a couple of his Boise State old boys, Eric Kiesau and Jeff Schmedding as OC and DC, respectively.
All of this led to what was widely thought as an attempt to get Harsin fired for cause – leaking out rumors/innuendo that Harsin was having an affair with a young lady that he hired from Boise State and gave her a job in football operations. The young lady had worked at Boise State for two years (one as a student) in a position fairly similar to what she was being hired for at Auburn. Harsin and his wife were on vacation in Mexico at the time. There was even an HR rule initiated after the investigation started (which was in place for a smaller Auburn branch but not the main one) that not cooperating with an investigation is grounds for termination. This actually gained Harsin sympathy, so the investigation was dropped and then some former players claimed something along the lines of “he doesn’t understand us and he’s a jerk”. Okay, I can actually see that considering what happened to Derek Mason, and it’s not great, but that’s not a firing offense.
So Harsin kept his job, but a person who already wasn’t a great recruiter has now had his recruiting job made much harder. Fast forward to this season – the offensive line is even worse, after a starter transferred out to play at Kentucky, and no real inroads were made in terms of improving it. The quarterback situation is not great – the starter was extremely spotty, then became injured. The backup is a redshirt freshman who’s got a lot of potential, but the lack of a line (and thus a running game) make his job really hard. The WR corp is a little better, but not all that great yet. Stud running back Tank Bigsby is doing the best he can, but the lack of a line, stacked defenses, and weird playcalling are making his job hard. How bad is the line? Tank has 326 yards on 69 carries so far this season for 4.7 YPC. He averages just over 0.5 yards per carry before contact. Do the math. There’s also this – in the second half of the last eight games against Power 5 teams, Auburn has scored 18 points (six FGs).
So – offense is a mess with no real prospects for a fix. Boise State old boys at the coordinator spots – Schmedding seems to be okay although the D does have some issues, it’s not the raging tire fire the offense is. I don’t know how much of the offense is Kiesau and how much is Harsin, but recruiting isn’t getting it done, and the coaching isn’t getting it done, either. I don’t see this team getting better with Harsin in charge, so Auburn’s gonna have to bite the bullet and pay the man his $15 million to get outta town. Hell, if Wisconsin can fire Paul Chryst nine months after giving him a five year contract extension, and he doesn’t have a losing record, then I don’t want to hear from anybody about firing Harsin in year two when the team is a mess.