Goodman: No more excuses for Auburn coach Hugh Freeze
This is an opinion column.
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Here’s the bare-knuckle truth for Auburn football starting this spring.
No one hired Hugh Freeze, and all of his baggage, to putz around in the Music City Bowl. An excellent coach with a troubled personal history, Freeze was hired for life-after-Nick Saban to do whatever it takes to win the SEC and make the new College Football Playoff. Spring football at Auburn begins on Tuesday. Freeze is entering his second year. His honeymoon of excuse making is over. Now it’s time to turn Auburn’s questionable moral compromise and a desperate desire to win into trophies.
Auburn hasn’t won the SEC since 2013. The Tigers have been afterthought ever since firing former coach Gus Malzahn after the 2020 season. Make no mistake about it. This is one of the most important spring practice periods in the history of Auburn football. What Freeze does over the next several weeks could define success at Auburn for years to come. The opportunity is there. Rival Alabama is a program in transition. The SEC is a league in flux. This has to be Auburn’s time.
If not this spring, then when?
Auburn went 6-7 in Freeze’s first season and lost to Maryland 31-13 in the Music City Bowl. The record doesn’t matter. The postseason flop was unimportant. Shoot it all into low Earth orbit. Put it out of your mind. Don’t even mention it in the 2024 preseason magazines. Freeze coached his first team on the Plains with an understanding that results on the field didn’t mean anything compared to what happened on the recruiting trail.
And it showed.
Auburn finished fifth in the final standings of the old SEC West, and lost to New Mexico State 31-10. It was all brutal but necessary because, in the end, the year was a net success thanks to paradigm-shifting success in recruiting.
Here’s the only result that meant anything for Auburn’s Freeze in Year One. The Tigers finished with a recruiting class ranked in the Top 10 in a year when everyone in the old SEC not only recruited against each other, but also incoming powerhouses Texas and Oklahoma. Most impressive of all, Freeze out-recruited Alabama’s Saban and Georgia’s Kirby Smart for top talent.
That hasn’t happened at Auburn in years.
Recruiting website 24/7 Sports collectively weighted Auburn’s class of 2024 at No.10 in the country. Another recruiting website, On3Sports, put the Tigers at No.8 nationally. Those rankings are subjective opinions. Go inside the numbers, and a case could be made that Auburn’s recruiting haul is closer to Top 3 in talent than Top 10. Here’s why.
The first thing Freeze did when he was hired at Auburn was begin recruiting a high school quarterback in Arkansas. Freeze landed a pledge from Walker White of Little Rock Christian Academy and then White, who is ranked No.5 overall among passers in the 2024 class, made it his business to be an immediate team leader and recruiter.
White is a Bo Nix-prototype quarterback both physically and in spirit. He began recruiting players for Auburn during his senior year of high school. It paid off. Auburn arguably has the best collection of young receiving talent in the country, and the ability to catch the football will make or break teams in the new SEC.
The league will operate under a single-division format beginning this season. The SEC is turning into a mini version of the NFL. Like the NFL, quarterbacks, receivers, cornerbacks and defensive ends will be at a premium. The teams that can stretch the field against opponents will win the most games, and Auburn will have the potential to do it better than anyone else.
Here’s the spring prospectus on the Tigers: Go deep and watch it fly.
Expect White to challenge Auburn’s 2023 starting quarterback, Payton Thorne, immediately. The incoming receivers will favor Thorne, which gives the new quarterback a major advantage in a spring competition. White is the franchise. Thorne is a transfer from Michigan State who isn’t afraid to stick his nose into the fray, but came away from his first season in the SEC with plenty of questions about his ability to throw downfield.
In a perfect world for Auburn, Thorne makes a major jump this spring and goes into fall camp as one of the top quarterbacks in the SEC. What’s more likely, though, is that White wins the job and Freeze takes his chances with a freshman quarterback against a 2024 schedule that begins with four tune-ups before Oklahoma and Georgia.
No offense to the Razorbacks, but if Auburn loses to Week 4-opponent Arkansas this season, then prepare to question everything.
Let’s not mince words here. Freeze flipped his coaching staff this winter because the pressure to win — and win big — begins this week. When Auburn accepted letters of resignation from beloved assistants Cadillac Williams and Zac Etheridge, it signaled the beginning of a new dynamic in the Iron Bowl rivalry and the SEC.
This is Freeze’s time to salvage his career and make a new name for himself. He ruined it at Ole Miss. Auburn has a head start on new Alabama coach Kalen DeBoer. Freeze should dominate a coach from outside the South. Win or fail, from this point forward Auburn’s coach can’t point the finger at anyone but himself.
SOUND OFF
Got a question about spring football, college basketball, the SEC or new Alabama coach Kalen DeBoer Want to get something off your chest? Send Joe a question about what’s on your mind for the weekly mailbag. Let your voice be heard. Ask him anything.
Joseph Goodman is the lead sports columnist for the Alabama Media Group, and author of the most controversial sports book ever written, “We Want Bama: A season of hope and the making of Nick Saban’s ultimate team”.