Thoughts on Hugh Freeze to This Point

As I scroll through Twitter throughout the day, I see lots of outrageous opinions. Since most of the accounts I follow are affiliated with Auburn, Hugh Freeze and the Auburn football team are the topic of many of these outrageous opinions. When it comes to social media, you have to take what you see with a grain of salt. In reality, most of the people expressing their opinions have zero clue what they are talking about. I myself am far from an expert. However, I pride myself on doing my due diligence and looking at things from a moderate and educated perspective. So I'm here to offer my thoughts on Freeze's performance up to this point.

Considering the talent deficit that he inherited, I would say that he's done a solid job with his product on the field. Auburn is currently sitting at 4-4 overall and 1-4 in the SEC. If you just look at the record itself, it looks ugly. However, those four losses came to teams that are far more talented than we are. We weren't meant to win any of those four games. On the other hand, if we only ever win the games that we are supposed to win, we will probably never reach the top again. The talent level in the SEC is unmatched. No matter who we recruit to play here at Auburn, we will probably never be able to just "out-talent" every opponent on our schedule. A couple of the wins will have to come from out-coaching our opponents. So the question is, will Hugh Freeze be able to do that?

If you look at his coaching at Auburn so far, you would probably be inclined to say no. However, he has publicly stated multiple times that he spends more time recruiting than he does gameplanning. He is trying to dig us out of the talent deficit so that he at least has a chance to win some games with his coaching ability. No matter how good of a coach you are, you cannot win every game with subpar talent. Just look at Nick Saban his first few years at Alabama. He is one of the greatest coaches of all time in any sport, and it took him a few years of recruiting to be able to win. So I'm fine with him spending the majority of his time recruiting. It's obviously working, as we are currently sitting at 17th in the 2024 recruiting rankings (according to 247). We would be higher, but we have fewer commits than most teams, and I'm fine with that as well. Hugh Freeze was known for his recruiting abilities at Ole Miss, and it looks to me like he brought those abilities to Auburn.

Some people might say that since he didn't win any championships at Ole Miss, he won't be able to win at Auburn. I would argue that he has more resources at Auburn than he did at Ole Miss. That Yellawood money runs very deep. Between his raw recruiting ability and the extra resources he has at Auburn, I think he will be able to take this program to the top in the near future.

I only have one issue with the way he's approached this season. I mentioned that I am perfectly fine with him spending his time recruiting rather than gameplanning. However, I wish that he wouldn't be so open about it with the media. How do you think it makes the guys on this team feel when he openly admits that he has essentially already moved on to future teams? Guys that have put their heart and soul into this program probably don't appreciate the fact that he has admittedly given up on them. What he's doing now will pay off in the future, but I think he needs to keep those kinds of things to himself. For example, he told the media about how he is often in the player's lounge with recruits an hour before kickoff. The current guys probably don't appreciate hearing those kinds of things. Maybe this is a soft take, but it's something that has stuck out to me during his interviews.

I am not a coach. I don't know what it takes to be a coach. I could be completely wrong about Freeze. I like what he's done at Auburn so far though. He seems to be setting us up for success in the future, and that's all you can really ask for at this point.