As we count down the days until Auburn and Georgia meet in Atlanta in the SEC Championship Game, it's important to look back at the Tigers' season as an exercise in patience for college football fans. In mid-October, Auburn had two losses and was ranked outside the top 20 in the AP poll. At that time, few SEC fans could imagine that the 2017 Tigers would be in Atlanta as the SEC West champions. 

Gary Danielson helped put Auburn's season in perspective during this week's visit with the 247Sports College Football Podcast. He correctly pointed out that you have to keep your eye on Auburn in all of the odd years, since those seasons have both Georgia and Alabama coming to Jordan-Hare Stadium. In every odd year, Danielson pointed out, you say "uh oh, let's see what they've got." 

"But I think it all crumbled with that Clemson game," Danielson said. "Not so much the score, not so much that they lost, it was the 11 sacks. Even I overreacted. You've got a passing quarterback in a running offense, is this going to work? That was the question I had going in, could they figure out a way to take the skills of Jarrett Stidham and make it work with an offense that in the past four or five years with Gus Malzahn ran the ball as much as Georgia Tech and Navy and Air Force. So right away you start out with a distorted view. And then when they play an LSU team that was a struggling as well, and blow a 20-0 lead, now the questions about Gus start to pop up. Can he handle a team, can he coach a team to a championship if he doesn't have Cam Newton? So now a lot of people set them aside, and then they started to roll."

It wasn't until Auburn started to roll after that LSU loss that fans started to remember why the Tigers were picked as a threat to Alabama coming into the season. 

"So you forgot about the Auburn team that came into this year with an experienced coordinator on defense in Kevin Steele, with a lot of players back from a year ago," Danielson pointed out. "A secondary with three veterans in the secondary and two young players at corner that are coming along. A defensive line with three, four or five future NFL football players that can be dominant. An offensive line that features four seniors. An emerging wide receiver group with a deep threat in Darius Slayton, a route runner in Hastings and Ryan Davis who has turned into such a valuable player once he gets his hands on the ball. And then the emergence of Kerryon Johnson. You look at a team now that is built in every direction solidly." 

Can this solid, championship-caliber Auburn team continue its run with a second win against Georgia in less than a month? We'll find out in the SEC Championship Game on Saturday in Atlanta (4 p.m. ET, TV: CBS, CBSSports.com, CBS Sports App).