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O’Gara: As Diego Pavia returns to Jordan-Hare Stadium, the irony (and pain) is at every turn for Hugh Freeze
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Maybe the third time is the charm for Hugh Freeze.
The first time that Diego Pavia faced Freeze, he did so as a 25.5-point underdog. Little did we know that would be Freeze’s last game at Liberty, which would continue its late-season free-fall 2 days before he was hired by Auburn. Pavia made sure Freeze’s Liberty tenure ended on a sour note by racking up 6 touchdowns in New Mexico State’s 49-14 beatdown on the road in Lynchburg, Va.
The second time that Pavia faced Freeze, he did so as a … 25.5-point underdog. Again. Little did we know at the time that Freeze’s Auburn squad would watch its 3-game winning streak come to a screeching halt at the hands of Pavia. Once again, he blew Freeze’s team out and cleared out the home crowd with a 31-10 victory at Jordan-Hare Stadium.
The third time that Pavia will face Freeze will be Saturday. He’ll do so as a 6.5-point underdog. Little did Freeze know at the time that he’d see him again when he walked off the field last year and dapped up Pavia after his brilliant performance. That game was what prompted Clark Lea to poach Pavia and several pieces of New Mexico State’s offense. Lea admitted that he watched Pavia’s performance at Auburn 9 or 10 times in the weeks that followed, which was the foundation of Vanderbilt’s offseason rebuild and subsequent historic 2024 season.
Ironic, it is.
On Halloween weekend, Pavia might as well return to Jordan-Hare in a Freddy Krueger mask. He’s been equally terrifying for Freeze.
“I’m sick of seeing that quarterback,” Freeze said with a laugh on Monday (H/T Michael Casagrande).
Freeze couldn’t have predicted that an SEC team would poach his kryptonite, much less one on the back end of his 2024 schedule as he’s desperately fighting for bowl eligibility. But if anyone should’ve seen Pavia as the diamond in the rough he’s proven to be, it was Freeze, not Lea. Instead, Freeze passed on the opportunity to recruit him to Auburn 3 times and instead settled on Michigan State transfer Payton Thorne, who’ll be Pavia’s counterpart again on Saturday.
Including Pavia’s win last year at Jordan-Hare, he’s seeking his 4th win against SEC competition since the start of last year. Mind you, half of that time was spent at New Mexico State. That’s how many SEC victories Freeze has as he nears the end of Year 2 on The Plains. If Freeze falters at the hands of Pavia again and drops his 4th consecutive home game vs. power conference competition, he’ll have reached a new low.
Go figure that today (Oct. 31) is the 2nd anniversary of when Bryan Harsin was fired at Auburn. Even more ironic is the fact that Freeze has the exact same overall record (9-12) and SEC record (4-9) as his predecessor. Shoot, they have the exact same Year 1 mark (6-7 overall, 3-5 in SEC play) and Year 2 mark (3-5 overall, 1-4 in SEC play).
In Freeze’s defense, Harsin never had to take a double dose of Pavia during his brief time at Auburn. Freeze got unlucky in that regard.
Check that.
We mustn’t forget that Freeze could’ve recruited Pavia in the 2022 post-regular season transfer window, the 2023 post-spring window and again in the 2023 post-regular season window. Just to recap, here was how that process played out:
- 2022 post-regular season transfer window: Nobody
- 2023 post-spring transfer window: Sign Payton Thorne
- 2023 post-regular season transfer window: Stick with Payton Thorne
For the “Pavia wouldn’t have fit the system” argument, take a look at Auburn’s 17 turnovers lost (No. 129 in FBS) compared to Vandy’s 5 turnovers lost (T-No. 6 in FBS) and tell me that Freeze wouldn’t have had fewer sleepless nights working with Pavia instead of Thorne. Or if you want to overlook the most obvious Achilles’ heel of the Thorne-led offense (ball security), check out Vandy’s 29 points/game vs. power conference competition compared to Auburn’s 17.2.
But I digress.
Freeze had a plan. He spoke candidly in the offseason about his reluctance to jump in at the million-dollar price point for portal quarterbacks.
“The options that you’re presented with: develop Payton, develop Holden (Geriner), develop Hank (Brown), develop Walker (White) or go spend a million dollars on this guy, I just couldn’t bring myself to doing that, because I wanted to put all the pieces together,” Freeze said on McElroy and Cubelic in the Morning back in May.
We don’t know what kind of NIL package Vanderbilt gave Pavia, but it’s safe to say that it wasn’t a million dollars. The irony is that Pavia’s play has certainly meant more to the university than a million dollars. Most recently, Vandy played a game as an AP Top 25 team for the first time in 16 years when it hosted No. 5 Texas. Pavia couldn’t quite lead the Commodores to another upset of a top-5 team in Nashville, but the impact of what he did by stunning No. 1 Alabama will be felt well after he plays his last down of college football this season.
That’s right, Freeze. Finally, Pavia will exhaust his eligibility. Though knowing how much Pavia has haunted Freeze, he’ll probably get hired as an offensive coordinator by one of Auburn’s 2025 opponents.
But Freeze can cross that bridge if and when he comes to it.
For now, he should be hoping that his third defensive coordinator in as many Pavia matchups (DJ Durkin) can find the answers. In 2 matchups vs. Freeze’s teams, Pavia has:
- 9 touchdowns (6 passing, 3 rushing)
- 575 total yards (415 passing, 160 rushing)
- 0 turnovers
- Led a 61% conversion rate (17-for-28) on 3rd/4th down
Against Freeze, those Pavia-led offenses averaged 6.7 and 6.4 yards/play, respectively, in those 2 matchups. The good news for Freeze is that Auburn’s defense allowed an average of 4.9 yards/play this season, and the only offense who hit 6.4 yards/play against the Tigers this season was … New Mexico. Not New Mexico State. Just New Mexico.
Still ironic.
Don’t ask Pavia how he feels about New Mexico or its logo. Let’s leave it at “relieved.”
Rest assured that no matter the result Saturday, Freeze will be relieved that he won’t have to see Pavia anymore.
Well, except for his nightmares. After all, you don’t just get rid of Freddy Krueger.
Connor O'Gara is the senior national columnist for Saturday Down South. He's a member of the Football Writers Association of America. After spending his entire life living in B1G country, he moved to the South in 2015.
