Similar to Saturday, Auburn posted a lopsided win over UMass to open its season last fall.

Sure, last year’s opener wasn’t a 70-point onslaught, but the Tigers won in convincing fashion before packing it up and heading west to Berkeley, California to take on the Cal Golden Bears in Week 2.

And there in the hills of California, Auburn’s offense appeared stuck in the mud as the Tigers needed a late-game drive to secure a narrow, 14-10 win over Cal.

“We don’t run from that,” Auburn head coach Hugh Freeze said when reminded of how different the Tigers’ offense looked from Week 1 to Week 2 last year.

Now set to see Cal in another post-blowout, second-week-of-the-season meeting, the Auburn offense will be challenged by a Cal defense that Freeze expects to look largely similar to what it did a year ago.

“Justin Wilcox is one of the better defensive coordinators in the nation, and has been for years,” Freeze said of Cal’s head coach, adding that Cal also has former Mississippi State defensive coordinator Peter Sirmon on staff.

“Both of those guys have been in Power 5 conferences for a long time and done a really nice job. And they did a great job against us last year.”

Cal held Auburn’s offense to just 257 yards last season — of which 136 came on the ground.

The Tigers also struggled with turnovers as it coughed up the football four times in the close win out west.

“Will they play us the same exact way they did last year? I don’t know,” Freeze said. “But last year, they were basically saying we’re going to make you have to throw the football and win some 1 on 1s, and we struggled to do that some.”

Of course, the Tigers didn’t have the reloaded wide receiver room it does now when they were struggling to find an offensive spark against the Golden Bears last fall, when the heroics of tight end Rivaldo Fairweather were needed to capture the win.

Given Auburn’s changes at the wide receiver position, it may not be likely that Cal tries to force the Payton Thorne and the Tigers to throw the football as much as it did last year.

However, when it comes to experience on the defense, Cal has plenty as it returns nine players who made at least six starts in 2023.

“They have quite a few returners on that side,” Freeze said.

Of those returners, Freeze explicitly mentioned a pair of edge rushers in former Florida defensive end and seventh-year player David Reese, in addition to former Utah outside linebacker and fifth-year player Xavier Carlton.

In 2023, Reese and Carlton combined for 84 total tackles, 13.5 tackles for a loss and 11 sacks.

Against Auburn, Reese and Carlton combined for five tackles, a tackle behind the line of scrimmage and a sack.

“You’ve gotta have a plan for those guys,” Freeze said, referring to Reese and Carlton.

Freeze also said Cal’s linebackers are “aggressive” and “play hard,” while the secondary is “athletic.”

As a unit, Cal’s defense is coming off a season-opener that saw it hold UC-Davis to 13 points and 304 yards of total offense — 221 passing and 83 rushing.

“They do a really nice job,” Freeze said. “They’ll have a good plan, I’m sure. And it’ll be a good challenge for us to see kind of where we are offensively now.”

The hope heading into Saturday is that Auburn can sustain the offensive showing it had against Alabama A&M.

“Here’s our chance to prove we can be a fundamentally efficient scoring machine against a team I think plays really efficient defensive football,” Freeze said. “It’ll be a really good test for us”