There are plenty of ways to quantify the damage at Auburn after Kevin Sumlin got the better of Gus Malzahn in the Hot Seat Bowl and Trevor Knight added the Tigers to his souvenir collection from the Heart of Dixie.

Texas A&M 29, Auburn 16 was the seventh straight loss to a Power 5 visitor to Jordan-Hare Stadium. Home-field advantage is nothing but a memory on the Plains. If this keeps up, Pat Dye may ask to have his name removed from the field.

It was the 10th loss in the last 11 games against rivals Auburn plays every year, meaning SEC West opponents and Georgia. The Tigers have lost their last meeting with each of those seven annual opponents, and they've dropped two in a row to Alabama, Georgia and Mississippi State.

Since Nov. 8, 2014, the day Auburn fell on its, um, face on its grass against Texas A&M and a freshman quarterback who's since skedaddled out of College Station, the Tigers are 1-8 in the SEC West.

Now here comes LSU with Leonard Fournette. If he does to the Auburn defense what he did last year, someone will have to pull the plug on the Aubietron because some scenes will not be appropriate for all viewers.

In short, this isn't the end of Auburn's season, but you can see it from here.

Hard to believe the Tigers could be 1-2 with a much-improved defense that has yet to allow 30 points in a single game. Hard to explain or defend getting three games into a season with no clue at quarterback for the second straight year.

Every team has questions, up to and including No. 1 and 3-0 Alabama, but the real issue at Auburn is the head coach appears no closer to finding answers on the side of the ball where he earned his reputation and this position in the first place.

It's still September, and all Auburn has done is give its own fan base more reasons to question Malzahn, Jay Jacobs and Jay Gogue, whose just-announced retirement throws another variable into the discussion of Malzahn's future.

At the moment, the Tigers are on track to finish last in the division for the second straight season, and a losing season without even a bowl trip to Birmingham looks more likely than not.

Through three games, Auburn has yet to leave home, and still the natives are more restless than they've been since 2012. That was the last time the performance of the football program plummeted from simply unenjoyable to totally unacceptable.

Can Auburn stop the bleeding against LSU? Can Malzahn find a way to generate some offense against a defense with a pulse? Can he keep this team together through this early adversity and reverse a negative trend with no end in sight?

Or are we fast approaching a time when the powers that be at Auburn are forced to come to the conclusion that the emperor has no clothes and the guru has no answers?

If you've got any suggestions for Malzahn, Jacobs or Gogue, bring them to AL.com All-Access, our daily chat from 10-11 a.m.