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These are dark days on Wire Road.
These are tough times on The Plains.
On the plus side, those new live oaks at Toomer’s Corner are remarkably unmolested by toilet paper.
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 – full of the promise of a better world if you just believe in Auburn – to swallow what is happening with the Auburn football team.
Unless you’re an Alabama fan, of course. Those folks are absolutely jumping up and down every week at Auburn’s football efforts.
But because said Creed advises followers that “this is a practical world and that I can count only on what I earn,” Auburn has earned the following practical talk …
Hugh Freeze ain’t the answer.
If you’re a true Auburn fan, you likely know this already. The proof is in the pudding, after all, and there isn’t 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 …) and with only 1 SEC victory this season.
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.
That, and the realization that Hugh Freeze ain’t the answer.
Even those on the rapidly disembarking Auburn bandwagon can understand that 9-12 is better than 9-13, you see. Those who utter “War Eagle” 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 …
As we said, Hugh Freeze ain’t the answer.
Disclaimer time: We didn’t 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 – so Freeze’s previous professional transgressions at Ole Miss suddenly felt tame.
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’s recruited talent.
But all the flashy icicle-themed “Freeze Warning” social media produced by the kiddos at Auburn can’t change the fact that they are ice-cold on the field in 2024.
The quarterback play – Payton Thorne and Hank Brown have alternated mediocrity while actively throwing the football to the other team – has been a liability. Scoring (which, we are told, is the name of the game …) 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.
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’s 3 points helps this cause a bit …).
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.
But therein lies the problem. Freeze can sell – he did (albeit with the proverbial $100 handshakes) at Ole Miss and Liberty – 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?
“We’ve got to look at ourselves as coaches first,” Freeze said in a postgame press conference after yet another desultory loss.
That’s correct. Whether Auburn fans care to admit it (again) or not, the problem at Auburn isn’t their average-at-best quarterback play or a continued inability to forge past the goal line.
The problem is with the guys under the headsets. That starts – and should end – with Freeze.
An APSE national award-winning writer and editor, David Wasson has almost four decades of experience in the print journalism business in Florida and Alabama. His work has also appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times and several national magazines and websites. He also hosts Gulfshore Sports with David Wasson, weekdays from 3-5 pm across Southwest Florida and on FoxSportsFM.com. His Twitter handle: @JustDWasson.
