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Hugh Freeze picked up right where he left off at SEC Media Days … but in a good way
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NASHVILLE — Six years after he was last at SEC Media Days, Hugh Freeze began Tuesday in fitting fashion.
“It’s good to be back.”
Freeze came back to the place where he made his last public appearance as Ole Miss’ head coach. SEC Media Days in 2017 was just a touch different for Freeze. Shoot, only 3 of the SEC’s current 14 coaches were in the same job. Little did we know that Freeze was about to get fired with cause following an escort service scandal that rocked college football.
Freeze was back, albeit with a different perspective than the one he had 6 years ago.
Auburn’s Hugh Freeze, at first SEC Media Days since 2016, opens with: “It’s good to be back.”
Last time he was here, asked if he regretted a tweet daring anyone with proof of violations to contact compliance.
“Sometimes you make decisions that probably aren’t the sharpest.”
— Kyle Tucker (@KyleTucker_ATH) July 18, 2023
Yeah, that’s not the Freeze that we got on Tuesday. He has been humbled. It shows.
Freeze, unlike Jimbo Fisher, was willing to offer up some transparency on the offense he’s running.
“I think once upon a time I was probably one of the better play-callers in college football. Obviously better players make you a better play-caller. I don’t know that I was the greatest play-caller or one of the best play-callers the last few years at Liberty,” Freeze said. “I managed the game really well and gave our kids a chance to obviously win some huge games, and we were really good on defense, and I kind of played to that.
“But coming back knowing what was all-encompassing to bring Auburn back, sitting in the chair that I have to sit in, I needed help.”
That help came in the form of Philip Montgomery, who’ll run Freeze’s system. “We’re running the same system that I’ve always run. I wasn’t going to get away from that. It’s worked for me everywhere I’ve been,” Freeze said.
There will be times in which Freeze might step in and call plays, but it’ll be mostly Montgomery, who was also brought in to help shake up the terminology. Freeze hasn’t changed that since his days coaching high school football 2 decades ago and, because he’s talked ball with so many SEC coaches on other staffs, he said the terminology has to change.
Freeze’s critical reasoning to pivot away from those play-calling duties makes sense. He certainly benefitted from the off-script brilliance of Malik Willis at Liberty. That’s obviously where Freeze had to reestablish himself as a head coach and convince the college football world that he was worthy of returning to the SEC stage.
“I would be less than truthful with you if after we started having success at Liberty, particularly with it just going FBS and us being able to beat the likes of Arkansas and BYU and Virginia Tech and Syracuse and playing close with every Power 5 that we played, did the thought start creeping in your mind that certain opportunities might present themselves again? Yes, at that point,” Freeze said. “But not prior to that point did (returning to the SEC) enter my mind.”
It does feel a bit full circle for Freeze. It’s probably not fair to say that he picked up right where he left off, though he did know that Bob Holt of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette getting a customary 4-part question off at Media Days is still very much the norm.
But Freeze didn’t take the approach of praising how loaded his team was with a position-by-position breakdown, which is something plenty of coaches do. He admitted the list of unknowns heading into his first season back is long.
“This is a strange feeling,” Freeze said, “and in some ways for me I’ve never experienced going into Fall camp and having so many unknowns in my mind, whether that’s because of the new world of you gained some of your roster from transfer portal world or you gained it even after spring practice through the portal world, and then obviously summer enrollees come.”
One of those guys gained after spring practice was Payton Thorne, the Michigan State transfer quarterback who brings the most experience to the table. He, Robby Ashford and Holden Geriner are in the midst of a quarterback battle, which Freeze said he has a 10-day plan to narrow to 2. It’ll be the first major decision for Freeze to make from a personnel standpoint.
But a Year 1 quarterback decision won’t determine whether Freeze has many more SEC Media Days appearances in his future. It’ll be everything else. Coaching personnel decisions, roster development, fitting into his new surroundings, getting players to buy what he’s selling … that’ll define this next chapter of Freeze’s SEC career.
A year ago at SEC Media Days, Freeze’s predecessor, Bryan Harsin, spoke directly about the coup to get him fired after Year 1. He won the day by addressing the messy scandal head on, and he maintained that he’d move past it and that it wouldn’t define his chapter at Auburn. Ultimately, though, Harsin couldn’t make it to his third SEC Media Days.
Freeze was at his sixth SEC Media Days, and his first at Auburn. He’s stepping into a different world. Six years ago, he wouldn’t have offered up a 443-word answer on teaching financial literacy with the sudden influx of NIL. Six years ago, he might’ve spoken confidently about why he felt he was poised to have one of the best offenses in America. Six years ago, he would’ve had every reason to push back on the notion that there were cracks in his foundation.
Six years later, Freeze is back, hopeful to turn the page.
Connor O'Gara is the senior national columnist for Saturday Down South. He's a member of the Football Writers Association of America. After spending his entire life living in B1G country, he moved to the South in 2015.
