Auburn football has been operating below what many fans believe to be the program’s standard for a number of years now.

The program hasn’t won more than six games since 2019 and is coming off its fourth straight losing season. The 2024 campaign was also the second in the last four years in which Auburn didn’t qualify for a bowl game, finishing the regular season with five wins.

In an interview with The Next Round during the Regions Tradition celebrity pro-am, head coach Hugh Freeze was asked if he believed the team had to win a certain number of games in his third season with the program, and his answer garnered plenty of attention from Auburn fans on social media.

“I’m not a fool, I think we’ve gotta go to a bowl game. I think our administration understands, look, I inherited a program that didn’t have a top 25 recruiting class for four years,” Freeze said. “We could’ve won some games last year, and we’ve gotta find a way to make sure we’re excellent in those areas that cost us those, that put us in a position to be bowl eligible if not more and I see no reason why we shouldn’t do that and I think that’s an expectation that our people should expect.”

Many fans criticized the idea of setting the bar at bowl eligibility, despite that not being a given for Auburn in recent years. Prior to the program’s struggles in the 2020s, though, Auburn made a bowl game in every season but one during the 2010s, winning one national championship and tallying three 10-win seasons.

Those years and the program’s prior history still create high expectations from fans, even if that level of success hasn’t been reached under Freeze or previous head coach Bryan Harsin.

When speaking to reporters Tuesday at SEC spring meetings, Freeze was asked again about expectations, but gave a broader answer.

“Win,” Freeze said of the expectation in Year 3. “It’s Auburn, it’s one of the best jobs in the country, and our roster looks better. And, you know, there’s a lot of games that you point to last year that could have gone the other way in our favor.

“And that’s a reasonable expectation that none of us should run from is for some of those to start going our way. And yeah, we had to redo a roster and all of that. But here we are in Year 3, the roster is good enough to win football games, so you can’t run from that.”

When asked a follow up question regarding a benchmark for that success, Freeze avoided giving a win total or certain metric but said Auburn should be in every game.

Auburn was in almost every game last season, but lost a handful of contests it had chances to win late. Freeze attributed most of those close losses to turnovers, kicking and execution on critical downs, all areas he said they’ve made strides to improve in for the 2025 season.

If those areas do improve — especially ball security and kicking — the roster seems talented enough to make a stride it hasn’t made in six years, but the variables of college football keep Auburn unpredictable, and Freeze hesitant to put a number on the expectations in 2025.

Peter Rauterkus covers Auburn sports for AL.com. You can follow him on X at @peter_rauterkus or email him at [email protected]m