ATHENS, Ga. — Auburn football is digging themselves a hole.

It's getting pretty deep, and Hugh Freeze has called it a disappointment. A step in the wrong direction.

The Tigers are 2-4 overall, 0-3 in conference after falling 31-13 to No. 5 Georgia (4-1, 2-1) on Saturday in Athens.

With a bye week on the way, exactly halfway through the season, is there any hope?

"We've got to, as coaches, figure out how to coach them harder and make sure that we don't make critical errors at critical times that cost us a chance to win a football game," Hugh Freeze said. "I keep saying that we're not far off because, you know, they're the No. 5 team in the country. We should've been in this game, but we're not playing winning football. ... It's my job to get that fixed."

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Auburn had a rough first half as their run game was stuffed by Georgia's thick line of defense. They only managed to put up three points in the first half, thanks to a 27-yard field goal by freshman kicker Towns McGough.

Senior quarterback Payton Thorne completed 62% of his passes (16 of 27) for zero touchdowns. Statistically, it isn't his worst outing of the season. He did throw four interceptions against Alabama A&M, and even then, he had at least one touchdown under his belt. However, this is his first scoreless outing leading the offense since he threw for zero scores at LSU on Oct. 14, 2023.

"There's never going to be a perfect game," Thorne said. "You go into every game knowing that. We didn't play good enough to win today.

"We're going a good job on the ground. It starts with those guys up front, and they're doing a good job. Jarquez and Damari (Alston) and (Jeremiah) Cobb back there are doing a good job of seeing what the offensive line is doing and attacking."

So how, after three straight losses, do they pick up the pieces? How do they keep the tower from tumbling even more?

"We've just got to keep our heads up," Hunter said. "We've got to keep going, keep pushing forward. We could be undefeated right now, but it's the little things we mess up ourselves. We've got to go in and not let our heads hang. We've got to go in and strive forward. Just go work hard this week to get ready for Missouri."

Thorne agreed on the importance of the bye week, saying it'll be good to finally take a much-needed pause and just breathe.

"You can kind of split it into two seasons now," he said. "We can flush this first half and go back to work."

Hunter said they've got to get better with communication, because that's the biggest way they lose. For example, Thorne did his own thing on the fourth-and-1 call to start the fourth quarter, not going with what was called at all, Freeze said. He said everyone was a little confused, and he should've used a timeout when he realized things were going awry, but he didn't react in time.

It's Auburn vs. Auburn at the end of the day.

"It's us," he said. "It's not what the defense does. It's what the offense is doing. We've got to fix that on our end. I feel like that's it. ... We just beat ourselves. We fix the little things, and we can beat anybody in the country. I feel like we've got the talent and the skill and everything else to do that.

"I expect more fight than what we saw for the 60 minutes today," Freeze added. "I told them that in the locker room, and I mean it. It's my job to get that out of them, and I'm going to die trying."

This article originally appeared on Montgomery Advertiser: Auburn football desperately seeking redemption after much-needed bye