Auburn head coach Hugh Freeze was essentially, in a roundabout way, asked what the hell happened Saturday after the Tigers suffered what some are calling the worst loss in Auburn football history.

The New Mexico State Aggies were supposed to come to Auburn, collect nothing but their $1.8 million check for playing the game, and get out of town.

Instead, Jerry Kill and the Aggies made out like thieves in the night as they not only made out financially, but also snatched a 31-10 win out from under the Tigers. Saturday’s result was the first win over a SEC opponent in New Mexico State football history.

So to echo the third question Freeze fielded in his post-game press conference Saturday night: What the hell happened? Was it a lack of execution? A lack of effort?

“You’re not going to execute if you’re not giving great effort. So it probably goes hand-in-hand,” Freeze said. “There’s nothing positive that I can say about tonight.”

Having a game against a Group-of-5 opponent like New Mexico State sandwiched between a dominating SEC win like last week’s against Arkansas and next week’s Iron Bowl matchup with Alabama reeks of a trap game.

And Freeze knew that coming into it.

“We won’t talk about the other team that you mentioned we’ll talk about the one we have right in front of us that could sting us,” Freeze said Monday when asked about Alabama coming to town next weekend.

Freeze learned firsthand that Kill and the Aggies were capable of administering black eyes.

When Freeze was at the helm of Liberty football program last fall, New Mexico State paid them a visit and walked out with 49-14 win as the quarterback Diego Pavia piloted the Aggies’ offense to a 428-yard night, outgaining the Flames by 113 yards.

On Saturday, Pavia did it again as he and the Aggies tallied 414 yards of offense to the Tigers’ 213 yards of offense.

“It feels like a bad dream,” Freeze said during his briefest post-game press conference of the season.

Unlike last year’s loss in Lynchburg, Va., however, there wasn’t the distraction of Freeze being rumored to be well on his way to accepting the Auburn position.

If anything, the attitude heading into Saturday’s matchup against the Aggies should’ve been the complete opposite considering the job the Tigers did in dismantling Arkansas just seven days earlier.

“As good as last week felt and as complete as we played in all three phases, it was the exact opposite today,” Freeze said. “And it’s very disappointing.”

On the heels of Auburn’s offense tallying 517 yards of offense against Arkansas last week, the Tigers only mustered 213 against the Aggies. And perhaps the most glaring part of that was Auburn’s inability to run the football on Saturday.

In his last three games, Auburn’s bell cow running back Jarquez Hunter has averaged more than 145 yards per game.

Against New Mexico State, Hunter rushed for just 27 yards.

But Hunter wasn’t the only one to struggle Saturday night.

As an offense, the Tigers rushed for just 65 yards against the Aggies – the fewest rushing yards of any game this season. The previous low was 136 yards against Cal in Week 2.

Auburn finished the night averaging just 2.5 yards per carry.

“We never could get in any rhythm, whatsoever, to establish the running game,” Freeze said.

In the first half, Freeze attributed that to two things: penalties and New Mexico State eating away at the clock when it had possession.

Auburn had just three first-half drives on Saturday. And in two of those, the Tigers committed costly penalties in two of them, forcing them to play behind the sticks.

Meanwhile, New Mexico State dominated the time of possession as they held the football for more than 19 minutes of the first half.

“They had the right calls at the right time, milked the clock. I mean, I bet we didn’t have 40 offensive plays between the penalties that kept killing ourselves with that,” Freeze said. “And them controlling the clock, so give them credit for that.”

In the second half, the Tigers couldn’t afford to run the ball as it tried to scratch and claw themselves out of the hole they found themselves in.

But unfortunately for Auburn, that hole never shallowed as New Mexico State’s three-point lead at halftime ballooned to 10 points, then to 17 points and finally to 21 points.

“There were just a lot of missed tackles, a lot of missed alignments,” Freeze said of the Auburn defense. “I didn’t think our effort was great.”

And like he said to answer the third question of his post-game press conference, without effort, questioning execution is moot.

So now where do the Tigers go having taken what feels like 1,000 steps backwards with and their annual date with the Crimson Tide just seven days out?

“I don’t know,” Freeze said when asked about his message to the team as they turn their attention to Alabama. “I’ll give it some thought tonight and come up with the best approach.”