These are dark days on Wire Road.<\/p>\n
These are tough times on The Plains.<\/p>\n
On the plus side, those new live oaks at Toomer\u2019s Corner are remarkably unmolested by toilet paper.<\/p>\n
As every week goes by, it must be more and more difficult to be an Auburn Tigers fan. I mean, you gotta be leaning hard into the Auburn Creed at this point \u2013 full of the promise of a better world if you just believe in Auburn \u2013 to swallow what is happening with the Auburn football team.<\/p>\n
Unless you’re an Alabama fan, of course. Those folks are absolutely jumping up and down every week at Auburn’s football efforts.<\/p>\n
But because said Creed advises followers that \u201cthis is a practical world and that I can count only on what I earn,\u201d Auburn has earned the following practical talk \u2026<\/p>\n
Hugh Freeze ain\u2019t the answer.<\/p>\n
If you\u2019re a true Auburn fan, you likely know this already. The proof is in the pudding, after all, and there isn\u2019t a whole lot of pudding being distributed around the Tigers right now. Auburn is 3-6 after having just lost at home to Vanderbilt (at least Alabama had the dignity to lose to the Commodores on the road \u2026) and with only 1 SEC victory this season.<\/p>\n
Once we get past the indignity Kentucky must be suffering for losing to this abysmal Auburn team in Lexington, and completely subtract the cupcake Ws against Alabama A&M and New Mexico that now feel like a complete tease, it becomes crystal clear that the Tigers are just a bad football team.<\/p>\n
That, and the realization that Hugh Freeze ain\u2019t the answer.<\/p>\n
Even those on the rapidly disembarking Auburn bandwagon can understand that 9-12 is better than 9-13, you see. Those who utter \u201cWar Eagle\u201d at each other were insistent on dumping Bryan Harsin after he started 9-12 a couple of years back, but now with Freeze carrying around a 9-13 record like a yoke around his neck \u2026<\/p>\n
As we said, Hugh Freeze ain\u2019t the answer.<\/p>\n
Disclaimer time: We didn\u2019t think Freeze was necessarily an awful hire 3 years ago, as he was coming off a successful coaching rehabilitation stint at Liberty with a 34-15 Flames record and successful recruiting history in the SEC. Yes, Freeze would probably need to have his cellular traffic monitored while on The Plains, but the college football world now is the Wild West with NIL and the transfer portal \u2013 so Freeze\u2019s previous professional transgressions at Ole Miss suddenly felt tame.<\/p>\n
And listen, we actually sort of agreed with Freeze last season following a 6-7 finish and a 31-13 Music City Bowl loss to Maryland when the coach basically pinned the mediocrity on the program still weeding through Harsin\u2019s recruited talent.<\/p>\n
But all the flashy icicle-themed \u201cFreeze Warning\u201d social media produced by the kiddos at Auburn can\u2019t change the fact that they are ice-cold on the field in 2024.<\/p>\n
The quarterback play \u2013 Payton Thorne and Hank Brown have alternated mediocrity while actively throwing the football to the other team \u2013 has been a liability. Scoring (which, we are told, is the name of the game \u2026) ranks 14th in the SEC and is 85th nationally. And play-calling in critical spots has been quizzical at times to the detriment of the bottom line.<\/p>\n
Not that all is awful at Auburn. Jarquez Hunter rumbled for a career-high 278 yards against Kentucky and is becoming more and more of a problem for opponents every week. And the defense is decent, allowing under 20 points a game (again, Alabama A&M\u2019s 3 points helps this cause a bit \u2026).<\/p>\n
Nevertheless, Auburn was sold on the premise that Freeze is an offensive guru who would light up their big fancy Jumbrotron with non-stop highlights. I mean, he did construct offenses at Arkansas State, Ole Miss and Liberty that delivered over 450 yards and 32.8 points per game.<\/p>\n
But therein lies the problem. Freeze can sell \u2013 he did (albeit with the proverbial $100 handshakes) at Ole Miss and Liberty \u2013 but he has yet to deliver at Auburn. The Tigers already pulled the warranty on Harsin at this point 2 years ago, so why not do the same now with Freeze?<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve got to look at ourselves as coaches first,\u201d Freeze said in a postgame press conference after yet another desultory loss.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s correct. Whether Auburn fans care to admit it (again) or not, the problem at Auburn isn\u2019t their average-at-best quarterback play or a continued inability to forge past the goal line.<\/p>\n
The problem is with the guys under the headsets. That starts \u2013 and should end \u2013 with Freeze.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
What now, Auburn? Hugh Freeze now has a worse record than Bryan Harsin did. And it doesn’t figure to get any better any time soon, either.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":440759,"featured_media":434051,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","format":"standard","tags":[],"class_list":["post-434035","article","type-article","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","article_types-scheduled","teams-auburn-football"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saturdaydownsouth.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/article\/434035"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saturdaydownsouth.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/article"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saturdaydownsouth.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/article"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saturdaydownsouth.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/440759"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saturdaydownsouth.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=434035"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saturdaydownsouth.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/434051"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saturdaydownsouth.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=434035"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saturdaydownsouth.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=434035"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}