Rest weeks are a good opportunity to heal beaten bodies. But weeks of rest can also help heal bruised spirits. And right now, there is no more beaten program in the SEC than the Auburn Tigers (2-4), a team that began the year with promise and hope and now finds itself on the brink of another wasted season in a long, maddening series of a they.
Auburn travels to No. 19 Missouri this week in a game that is crucial to the Tigers’ mentality, success and future. Another loss in the SEC (Auburn is already 0-3 in conference play) and the Tigers will slide even faster toward a complete collapse, with repercussions that could last well beyond 2024.
It wasn’t supposed to be like this. This was supposed to be the season that second-year head coach Hugh Freeze took the Tigers to the next level; maybe not at the SEC championship level, sure, but at the level of scoring a big win every year. Freeze came to Auburn last season after the Tigers endured a chaotic run of four head coaches in three years, including interims. The Plains needed credibility and stability, and Freeze, despite his disciplinary and behavioral baggage, was supposed to provide both.
For a moment, it looked like Freeze had Auburn on the right track. The Tigers were tied with two-time defending national champion Georgia in the fourth quarter of last season’s game at Auburn. Only the “Gravedigger” 4th and 31 kept Auburn from defeating Alabama. Freeze attracted and retained top recruits in a way his recent predecessors had not.
But between those 2023 Georgia and Alabama games came a shocking 31-10 humiliation at the hands of Diego Pavia and New Mexico State, an upset that would serve as an early warning. Auburn suffered another unexpected loss earlier this season: a 21-14 loss to Cal, the game that really started the hilariously absurd #Calgorithm movement on Twitter.
Crushing losses to Arkansas, Oklahoma and Georgia followed, and so did accusations. Freeze has thrown his players under multiple obstacles, most notably quarterback Payton Thorne, who collided with Freeze two weeks ago, especially during a failed fourth down early in the fourth quarter.
“Yeah, he didn’t accept what we had called at all,” Freeze said after the game. “Payton is a thinker. He knows the football. He decided to try to run some kind of zone read there. I think everyone was a little confused. But we definitely weren’t on the same page there.”
Now Missouri Week is here and the first results are not promising. Freeze already scored the first own goal of the week by fumbling the ball off a compliment from Missouri head coach Eli Drinkwitz, providing top-notch material for Missouri’s social media bulletin boards on Monday.
“For me, some of the best coaching jobs are done with some of those lesser squads in recruiting. And now you also look at people like Eli and (Kentucky’s Mark) Stoops and (Vanderbilt’s) Clark Lea, who I think are doing incredible jobs in their respective programs with the kids they’ve had,” Freeze said.
Missouri’s “minor squad” is 5-1 and a 4.5-point favorite over Auburn, for the record.
Freeze hopes the first off week of the season will serve as a recalibration. “We had a much-needed week off last week, which was good for our physical body and our mental side,” he said Monday. “It’s obviously disappointing to be where we are in terms of records and determined that we must play more consistent football in all three phases. We have to train that better.”
But even in the midst of all the coaches’ talk, Freeze issued a direct warning to his players. “If we have a critical drop, it would be very, very, very, very discouraging and infuriating if another situation occurs on a fourth-and-one or a third-and-one where our kids don’t have a clear understanding of what should happen,” he said. “That “It would be quite infuriating.”
So, would it be the players’ fault for not executing, or the coaching staff’s fault for not preparing the players? We’ll have to wait and see, right?
You’re hesitant to say that Freeze isn’t going anywhere, particularly with a support base as active and spending as Auburn’s, but an in-season buyout of Freeze’s six-year, $39 million contract would currently be equivalent to $20 million. In an era where college athletic departments have to watch their bottom line, paying someone $20 million to leave doesn’t make much sense, even at Auburn.
Not only that, but kicking Freeze over Toomer’s Oaks would carry the very real risk of detonating Auburn’s strong 2025 recruiting class. currently brownahead of everyone outside the state of Ohio, Alabama and Texas. If Freeze leaves, so might the many Auburn-bound high school seniors.
The problem for Freeze, and for Auburn as a whole, is that the Tigers have a killer agenda ahead of them. After Missouri, Auburn has back-to-back games against the SEC’s definition of unpredictability (Kentucky and Vanderbilt) before another bye week, a don’t-take-it-lightly game against Louisiana-Monroe and a fierce comeback-to-closer game from Texas A&M and Alabama. Getting even 3-3 on this streak may be too much to ask… and Auburn will still need to win four of those games just to get to .500 for the season.
Many more losses, and the Auburn family will begin to look ahead to next season…and hope their future stars stick around for just as long.