This is an opinion column.

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Hugh Freeze, legendary golfer, couldn’t sandbag forever.

Auburn’s football coach talked about making the playoffs during his time in front of the cameras at SEC Media Days. He also said the Tigers shoulda/coulda won more games last season if only they had better players.

And better coaching.

It’s not hard to read between those lines.

He was talking about quarterback Payton Thorne and an overmatched group of offensive linemen.

But let’s forget about last season.

It was never about Year Two at Auburn for Freeze. Since the beginning of Freeze’s time down on the Plains, everything has been building towards this season: Year Three, the make or break moment for every coach trying to rebuild a contender.

It took Nick Saban three years at Alabama.

Paul Bryant, too.

Same for Pat Dye at Auburn and Steve Sarkisian at Texas.

Kirby Smart won 13 games in his second season at Georgia, but he took over a team that won 10 games in 2015. Things weren’t exactly broken in Athens with coach Mark Richt. His players just needed a little more motivating.

We could pick through the record books until the beginning of fall camp. The point is this. It’s a critical season for Auburn, which is an afterthought these days in a loaded down super conference.

It’s time for Auburn to be relevant again in football and the window is here … but it’s closing fast.

If Freeze misses on this moment, well, let’s just be clear. It might be time to move on to a different coach with a better plan.

On paper, I agree with Freeze that the Tigers have the potential to be an 11-win team. It’s time for Auburn fans to be excited about football again. That’s the good news, and Freeze deserves credit for building this team. The receiver room is loaded, the quarterback started for Oklahoma last season and the offensive line received some major upgrades via the transfer portal.

If not in 2025 for the Auburn Tigers, then when?

Freeze was a controversial hire, but the reasoning and the vision was that Auburn would have its most talented team in years at the precise moment that Alabama was vulnerable. That projection has played out perfectly.

Saban has been retired from Alabama going on two seasons. The Tide transitioned to new coach Kalen DeBoer last season, and Alabama missed the playoffs, lost to Vanderbilt and looked awful at Oklahoma.

So how did Freeze take advantage of Alabama’s clumsy finish to the 2024 season? Smartly, Freeze went into the portal and recruited the same OU quarterback who gutted it out against the Tide.

Give Freeze credit for the strategic move. Auburn now goes to Oklahoma for its season opener with the Sooners’ previous starter at quarterback who also happened to take down Alabama.

I asked Freeze about his chess moves with new quarterback Jackson Arnold, but Freeze didn’t want any credit for his gambit.

“I hadn’t even thought about that,” Freeze said, “so I can’t say that played any factor into it at all … but it does make for an interesting week when you start thinking about, oh, heck, if it’s the same system and verbiage, that’s something you do have to think about.”

Everything is falling into place for a major turnaround. Even the things Freeze apparently didn’t consider until asked at SEC Media Days.

Freeze set the bar hire on Tuesday. Does he need to make the playoffs this season to keep his job? I’m not convinced of that, but Auburn should be considered an underrated sleeping giant going into fall camp. It’s winning time on the Plains.

“We have built this fairly fast,” Freeze said. “We should have won or could have won some games last year, and we’ve done everything in our power to evaluate why that happened and what we can do better as coaches and then get more pieces to the puzzle with more and more players. We feel very confident we’ve done both.

“We embrace the high expectations that Auburn brings, and we believe this team’s potential is limitless.”

But the time for resurrecting the Tigers is fleeting.

BE HEARD

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Joseph Goodman is the lead sports columnist for the Alabama Media Group, and author of the book “We Want Bama: A Season of Hope and the Making of Nick Saban’s Ultimate Team.”