If you're not as good as you used to be at the thing you're supposed to be good at, what good are you? That's the question a lot of Auburn fans are asking about Gus Malzahn after Clemson 19, Auburn 13.

A very close loss to a very good team should've been an encouraging start to Malzahn's fourth season as head coach. Instead it put another dent in his reputation. His ability to develop even a serviceable quarterback and construct at least a competent major-college offense slipped further into doubt.

Auburn's sixth straight home loss to a Power 5 opponent looked all too familiar. It was the fifth straight home loss in that streak in which the Tigers scored fewer than 20 points.

Look at the trend that began last season and continued Saturday night.

Mississippi State 17, Auburn 9.

Ole Miss 27, Auburn 19.

Georgia 20, Auburn 13.

Alabama 29, Auburn 13.

Clemson 19, Auburn 13.

Think about those numbers. The streak is now five straight home losses to major-conference opponents in which the defense didn't give up as many as 30 points but the offense didn't score as many as 20.

Auburn didn't hire Malzahn to play Pat Dye or Tommy Tuberville football, and Malzahn still has miles to go to justify the contract extension AD Jay Jacobs handed him in the offseason. The 2016 season opener didn't begin to answer any of the questions the 2015 season raised about Malzahn's expertise on the offensive side of the ball.

The Malzahn offense of 2013 never failed to score fewer than 21 points. The Malzahn offense of 2014 went below 20 only once in a road loss at Georgia. Then quarterback Nick Marshall left to play defensive back in the NFL, and Auburn hasn't come close to replacing him.

The wheels started to come off the Malzahn offense in 2015, for a variety of reasons that started at quarterback, and an entire offseason of preparation didn't exactly tighten the lug nuts.

No one would mistake the Clemson defense for an immoveable object. In three of their last four games a year ago, those Tigers gave up 402 yards and 32 points to South Carolina in their rivalry game; 382 yards and 37 points to North Carolina in the ACC Championship Game; and 473 yards and 45 points to Alabama in the national championship game.

Clemson lost a number of key players from that defense, and still the visiting Tigers limited Auburn to 38 yards in the first half and 262 overall. The total was just 2 yards more than Auburn's lowest output of 2015, which came against both LSU and Alabama. But Saturday's average of 3.7 yards per play was worse than both the LSU (4.6) and Alabama (4.3) games a year ago.

An offense should improve as the season grows, but this is the first time Auburn scored fewer than 31 points in an opener with Malzahn as coordinator or head coach. It's not a coincidence this is the first time Malzahn has started 0-1 at Auburn.

In 2013 and 2014, Malzahn's run-first, play-action offense was supplemented by smoke and mirrors. Against Clemson, with a dizzying array of personnel groupings and a mystifying rotation of three quarterbacks and two running backs taking snaps, it looked like smoke and mirrors was the offense.

One game is just one game, or it would be if Clemson weren't merely the latest befuddling performance by the Auburn offense. The way Arkansas State flopped in a 31-10 loss to Toledo, Texas A&M needed overtime to put away UCLA 31-24 and LSU tanked in its 16-14 loss to Wisconsin, Auburn's remaining September visitors all look vulnerable.

The way Auburn struggled against Clemson, it's hard to be confident the Tigers can muster enough points to take advantage.