Is it happening again? Is an Auburn team that was written off flipping the script in a way no one saw coming? Is Gus Malzahn authoring another turnaround of historic proportions?

It wouldn't be the first time. See 2013.

It sure looks like another big bounce is under way after four straight wins have lifted the Tigers from 1-2 to 5-2, from unranked to No. 15 in the AP poll, as they steamroll toward the Grove to play Ole Miss.

In a little more than a month, the water-cooler conversation has changed from potential replacements for Malzahn as head coach to possible scenarios in which Auburn could make the College Football Playoff as 11-2 SEC champions.

Playoff talk now is as premature as the hot-seat chatter then, but recent history indicates it's foolish to write off Malzahn. The coach who led the greatest one-season turnaround in SEC history in 2013 is on pace to add the greatest in-season about-face in Auburn history to his resume.

Consider this. No Auburn team has ever started a season with at least two losses in its first three games and come back to finish that season with 10 wins. Auburn is halfway there with this favorable remaining schedule: at wounded Ole Miss, home with limited Vanderbilt, at struggling Georgia and home with overmatched Alabama A&M.

Run that part of the table, and a 9-2 Auburn team would take all kinds of momentum and confidence to Tuscaloosa for its meeting with an Alabama machine that's likely to be 11-0.

Have we mentioned that Nick Saban is 1-3 against ranked Auburn teams in the Iron Bowl? Or that, at LSU and Alabama, he's 0-6 against Auburn teams that finished the season with at least nine wins?

It's a long way to Nov. 26 for both teams, but if this Auburn roll continues, that could be the day the Tigers make school history.

The greatest in-season turnarounds by Auburn in terms of overall victories came in 1984 and 2007. Both of those teams started with at least two losses in their first three games and rebounded to finish with nine wins.

Pat Dye's 1984 team failed right out of the gate to live up to its preseason No. 1 ranking, starting 0-2 with losses to defending national champion Miami and Texas. Those Tigers regrouped to finish 9-4 after a Liberty Bowl win over Arkansas, and they would've defended their SEC title had they not blown several late chances to beat Alabama in the game known as Wrong Way, Bo.

Tommy Tuberville's 2007 team started 1-2 with home losses to South Florida in overtime and Mississippi State. That team regrouped to finish 9-4 after wins over Alabama in Saban's first Iron Bowl and Clemson in the Chick-fil-a Bowl.

Two other memorable comeback seasons on the Plains happened in 1954 and 2003. Shug Jordan's 1954 team started 1-3 with road SEC losses at Florida, Kentucky and Georgia Tech. (Yes, kids, the Yellow Jackets used to be part of the SEC.) That team rebounded to win its final seven games, including the Iron Bowl and the Gator Bowl over Baylor, to end 8-3.

Tuberville's 2003 team started 0-2, getting outscored 40-3 by USC and Georgia Tech, which set the Jetgate wheels in motion. Auburn's comeback to finish 8-5 with wins in the Iron Bowl and Music City Bowl over Wisconsin didn't save Tuberville's job, though. The secret plan to fire him and replace him with Bobby Petrino failed when it went public just days after the "Go crazy, Cadillac" Alabama game.

Any talk of firing Malzahn should be put back in the closet along with the three-quarterback monte and the Chandler Cox pirouette. If this team continues on this road, the hot topics going into the final regular-season game will sound nothing like the hot takes coming out of the opener.

That would be so Auburn. Changing quarterbacks didn't work for Malzahn. He and the Tigers are much better at changing narratives.