Auburn lost 27-10 in its SEC opener on the road against Texas A&M on Saturday. No need to sugarcoat it, the offense was awful.

So it’s time for postgame grades to recap this ugly start to conference play. There are some bigger-picture takeaways. Those are on their way. But for now, these grades will focus on Saturday’s game alone.

Offense: F

I wrote our grades piece against Cal and gave Auburn’s offense just better than an F because it found a way to have a good drive to win the game. That was the only reason Auburn didn’t get an F that day.

This was worse.

Sure it was against a better opponent but it showed so many facets of an Auburn offense that don’t appear up to the task of SEC play through one game now.

Auburn’s offensive line was beaten to the tune of allowing seven sacks and 15 tackles for loss. That’s bad, very bad. Auburn only had 56 passing yards and that’s including all three quarterbacks playing in this game.

Auburn’s first four drives of the second half were as follows

– Three plays, -9 yards

– Three plays, 0 yards

– Three plays, 1 yard

– Three plays, -17 yards

That’s backbreaking, and it didn’t matter which quarterback was playing. Head coach Hugh Freeze detailed significant mistakes in quarterback decision-making to miss open receivers. There were also overthrows from multiple quarterbacks on plays that could have easily been touchdowns. And that is just the times the receivers were open, which were not frequent.

It didn’t matter which quarterback was playing, and that was the same issue against Cal. There are some broad issues here that don’t stem from any one facet of this offense, coaching or players alike.

Just about pick anything on offense and it was bad. The only points scored were a 53-yard Alex McPherson field goal on a drive where Auburn started on the Texas A&M side of the field.

Auburn had 200 total yards of offense. It averaged 3.1 yards per play.

This was a total, complete, all-systems failure.

But in a way where it was easy to say throw the film away from the Cal game, this performance — showing many of the same problems the offense has shown against lesser opponents resurfacing against an SEC defense — may show systemic issues. More on that in future stories.

Defense: B

This defense can only carry Auburn for so long. It’s done so since the moment it took the field against Cal and held firm until the second half Saturday.

Eugene Asante had a fumble return for a touchdown in what was maybe Auburn’s only bright spot for the whole game. Kayin Lee was a bright spot, too, forcing the fumble on that same play.

But eventually, the bend-don’t-break defense finally broke. It’s spent game after game bailing out a stagnant offense, and frankly, that can’t last forever.

After allowing just 121 yards in the first half, the defense gave up 281 yards and 21 points in the second half.

Auburn held Texas A&M starter Connor Weigman off to a slow start before his first-half injury and the emergence of Max Johnson in a heroic backup performance sunk the Tigers. One 79-yard rush to Amari Daniels when the result of the game was largely in hand also inflated some Texas A&M offense numbers.

Overall, not bad. But the second half falters didn’t help an Auburn offense that needed a lot of help.

Special teams: A-

If the punting was really good as a whole, that’s probably not a good sign about how a game went. Oscar Chapman averaged just over 40 yards per punt and made a quite athletic play in the first half to get a punt off despite a Reed Hughes snap that was high over his head and mishandled.

McPherson made a 53-yard field goal but that was his only kick of the game.

Not a ton of action from the special teams, but nothing bad from this group either.

It was interesting seeing Koy Moore used as the primary kick returner after cornerback Keionte Scott’s long-term ankle injury. He had been the punt returner. Auburn had tried many options here to replace Scott including Jay Fair, Jaylin Simpson and Ja’Varrius Johnson but seemed to go with Moore. It did need a bit of a double-take, though, as Moore and Scott wear the same No. 0.

Coaching: B-

I feel like I’ve written this point before. As a whole, defensive coordinator Ron Roberts had a good game plan. It’s hard to account for a quarterback injury in that game plan. And overall, Auburn’s defense played well before it wore down.

But the penalties and decision-making on offense were once again confounding and confusing.

Auburn was penalized 10 times for 64 yards, albeit at least three of them appeared as intentionally getting a delay of game flag to make more room for a punt into the Texas A&M half of the field.

All five of Auburn’s starting offensive linemen were penalized.

The quarterback rotation was again used to provide a spark on offense but didn’t seem to make a ton of sense at times as Thorne made some seemingly random appearances after it appeared command of the offense had been passed Robby Ashford for this game.

Hugh Freeze has some serious questions again on this offense about who the quarterback will be and who will block for them. Thorne hasn’t been productive other than the second half against Samford. Ashford and Holden Geriner are unreliable and it would be hard to argue starting them seeing as No. 1 Georiga is Auburn’s next opponent.

This is a huge conundrum.

Overall: C

The offense is the story and it’s hard to really look at anything else. It was abysmal, plain and simple.

There were some other solid parts of the performance to build on, but it’s hard to give any better grade than this after a performance like ~that~.

The problem is it’s not as if Auburn has a chance to work on this. Georiga is next. Then a bye week followed by LSU on the road and Ole Miss in Auburn. For a group lacking solutions on offense, that’s about as brutal a stretch of games as a team can get.

These are the types of games Auburn’s transfers said they came to the SEC to play: to play top teams in big venues and find ways to win. Auburn’s transfers got that chance Saturday and were severely outmatched.

They’ll have more chances, but Saturday in Texas wasn’t promising.

Matt Cohen covers Auburn sports for AL.com. You can follow him on Twitter at @Matt_Cohen_ or email him at [email protected]