These haven’t been the best of years for defenses.

Huddles were suddenly passe’, everyone was in a hurry and scoreboards looked like slot machines.

“I just think there’s got to be some sense of fairness in terms of asking is this what we want football to be?” Nick Saban famously said in 2012.

The words were uttered just a few days after an exhausting 33-14 win over Ole Miss and its first-year head coach Hugh Freeze.

Stick around long enough, they say, and everything comes full circle.

So here we are, in 2023 after Alabama took its swing at the no huddle but appears to be settling back into something more conventional.

And Hugh Freeze has an offense that can’t get out of first gear.

Is defense back? Texas is and that seemed impossible not long ago, so maybe?

It’s just hard to ignore some of the trends — perhaps still on the anecdotal side of scientific, but not something to ignore.

Auburn’s averaging just 215.0 yards in two games against Power 5 competition. A 230-yard night at Cal ended in a 14-10 win against that same Golden Bear defense that allowed 376 yards the following week to Idaho of the FCS and 529 in Saturday’s 59-32 loss to Washington.

Maybe it’s just the offenses?

Freeze’s first year at an Ole Miss program coming off a 2-10 season had the talent to manage just two sub-300-yard game in 2012. Fittingly, one was the loss to Alabama that prompted Saban’s quote where Ole Miss recorded just 218 yards, though it eclipsed the 500-yard mark three times. That team finished the season 46th nationally in total offense, up from 114th in the final year under Houston Nutt.

Auburn was 73rd last year and 84th through four games, half of which were stat-padders against UMass (492 yards) and Samford (562 yards).

Georgia is next and that’s less than optimal coming off a performance even worse than Week 2 at Cal. Auburn managed just 200 yards in a 27-10 loss at Texas A&M. The average snap netted 3.1 yards while the passing game contributed 56 total.

Score one for the Aggie defense or Auburn’s offense?

They aren’t alone, though.

Hold my corn, the Ferentz family whispered because what Iowa did Saturday night at Penn State made Auburn look downright efficient.

The Hawkeyes were shutout 31-0 in State College but the numbers would gag the average viewer. Here are a few.

• Total yards: 76
• First downs: 4 (four … f-o-u-r)
• Total plays: 33
• Time of possession: 14 minutes, 33 seconds
• Possessions ending in Penn State territory: 1

Somewhere in Tuscaloosa, Nick Saban smiled looking at this vomit pile of a stat sheet. Head coach Kirk Ferentz employs his son, Brian, as the offensive coordinator and had very measured postgame comments.

“Sometimes those things snowball and I think that’s what took place tonight,” the elder Ferentz said. “In the first half, started out, we had the drive and had the turnover and after that we seemed to lose the momentum. They’re a good team. They’re a good defensive football team. We just have to get back to work.”

That laudable first-half drive mentioned netted 30 yards. It was the longest of the night.

Now Penn State has the defense is No. 1 total defense (partially because of playing Iowa). The Nittany Lions are one of six defenses allowing less than 10 points a game, a number skewed by early-season cupcakes but still notable since that’s not something you see these days. The last defense to finish a season with a single-digit scoring allowance was Alabama’s legendary 2011 team surrendered 8.2 a game.

Ohio State is also among those six allowing 8.5 a game and that includes Saturday’s 17-14 classic win over then-No. 9 Notre Dame.

A few other top-25 games had low scores including Utah’s 14-7 win over UCLA, Oklahoma’s 20-6 win at Cincinnati and Alabama’s 24-10 win over Ole Miss.

The Crimson Tide are 18th in scoring defense (13.5 points per game) thanks mostly to the 34-24 loss to Texas. It’s a defense that’s taken its criticism in recent years but has allowed just two touchdowns in the three other games this season. Ole Miss was averaging 526 yards a game but Lane Kiffin’s group managed just 301 on Saturday.

It’s kinda wild that the offensive coordinator Saban hired to modernize the Tide offense in 2014 in response to the Ole Miss and Texas A&Ms of the world is now the coach of the team that once drew Saban’s famous quote.

Crazy that Alabama stuffed that team with an old-school defensive effort on the same day Freeze and Auburn looked as lost offensively as ever.

Now Freeze will face Georgia, coached by the former Alabama defensive coordinator he put on skates in Oxford. Kirby Smart figures to add more symmetry to this dynamic when his No. 1 Bulldogs face this scuffing Auburn offense.

Full circle, indeed.

Is defense back?

Or are the offenses the problem?

We’re likely counting chickens and eggs but there’s at least an anecdotal difference in the football we’re seeing this season.

And for Auburn, at least you’re not Iowa.

Michael Casagrande is a reporter for the Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter @ByCasagrande or on Facebook.