ATLANTA — It doesn’t happen often, if ever.
An athletic director flanking a head coach at SEC Media Days is unique. Texas A&M athletic director Ross Bjork was with Jimbo Fisher in 2021 ahead of the announcement that Texas was set to join the SEC. Unique circumstances, those were.
On Tuesday, Hugh Freeze was joined by Auburn athletic director John Cohen as he made the rounds at SEC Media Days. Cohen was in town with Freeze at a booster event earlier in the week and stayed in Atlanta, but he also spoke to media members individually during Freeze’s time at Media Days. Unique circumstances, these are.
Freeze’s time at the podium ranged everywhere from how he’ll use fewer tight end sets because of the receiver depth to whether he’s sick of defending his golf game.
For what it’s worth, Freeze insisted that while it’s something he enjoys doing, “I assure you it doesn’t take away from my time to take Auburn back to the top of the college football world.”
I’ll choose to believe Freeze on the part about golfing not getting in the way of recruiting, despite what a mid-summer class ranking in the 80s suggests (June is now the busiest month on the recruiting calendar). I’ll also choose to believe that Freeze has no choice to sell, but I’m not buying it.
I’m not buying it after I bought it the last 2 years. I bought the accountability he came with to SEC Media Days in 2023, wherein he admitted that he thought his best days as a play-caller were behind him, and that he wanted to focus on bigger-picture things in his return to the SEC. A year later in 2024 when he pulled a 180 and took control of primary play-calling duties again, I bought it again.
Well, no more. Freeze’s sales pitch should fall on deaf ears externally, at least until November. By then, according to Freeze, Auburn will be in the Playoff hunt.
“I truly believe that in the Playoff run we’re going to be in this discussion because I love this team,” Freeze said. “I think we had — now, we’ve got to stay healthy and we need the ball to bounce our way a couple times this year instead of against us, I’m sure, but that’s our full expectation. We embrace the fact that that is what Auburn should be, in those talks year in, year out.”
Well, except for the fact that in the last 7 seasons, Auburn hasn’t had Playoff relevance in November. Three different coaches were responsible for that, of course, but Auburn is just trying to get Playoff relevance into October. That’d be a 180 from last year when Auburn suffered 3 pre-October losses at Jordan-Hare Stadium for the first time in program history.
But hey, as Freeze reminded us, Auburn is right there. And by right there, that’s 2-6 in 1-score games under Freeze. He sold his plan to fix that.
“The first thing you have to do is look at you as a coach. Why did we lose those games? Well, last year they came down, those close ones, turnovers, we were the worst in the league at turning the ball over, and we did not score enough touchdowns in the red zone, and we did not play great defense on critical downs, and our field goal unit did not make some critical field goals for various reasons,” Freeze said. “How do you improve those? You look at us first, coaches.
“We’ve done a deep dive into all of that to see do we need to change anything schematically. And the answer to some of that was yes, we probably need to do less, and then go get more pieces to add to the roster to where, when you do call that play, the chances of success go up because better players make better plays.”
I won’t dig into the frustrations of Auburn’s kicking game and why replacing a starter who basically missed the entire season with ulcerative colitis was a mess, especially when Freeze would opt for 50-yard field goals with a true freshman who didn’t make a kick longer than 32 yards. I also won’t dig into Freeze’s pass-heavy approach that deviated from All-SEC running back in Jarquez Hunter in critical moments, nor will I discuss his frustration that his running back threw an interception on a failed trick play late in the Iron Bowl.
But Freeze’s deep dive on schematic changes had better be drastic. Payton Thorne happened. Freeze can’t change that. The aforementioned turnover issues aren’t destined to fix themselves just because Freeze brought in Jackson Arnold, who had ball-security issues of his own during his time in and out of the starting lineup at Oklahoma in 2024.
Freeze is selling Arnold. He has to. Beyond selling an improved kicking game, Freeze’s evaluation of the former 5-star quarterback will have a much bigger say in his future on The Plains than anything else.
“When you evaluate it, you said it, (Arnold) had several different play callers, injured offensive line and receivers, and yet when you pull all of his throws, I still saw that there it is, that’s what I saw. There it is again. He still has that about him,” Freeze said. “Then you look at his toughness, and in the Alabama game putting his team on his back with his legs, and I mean, he had some tough runs. So I knew he had the toughness to him.
“And now it was just a matter of, man, let’s give this guy a restart and let him regain his swagger and confidence, and I knew that the receiver room we had could assist in that, and it did pretty quickly when he found out, man, I make a good throw in this area and this one-on-one, our guys are making plays. I’ve seen that swagger and confidence come back pretty quickly.”
Ah, a restart. Once upon a time, that’s what Freeze’s time at Auburn was supposed to be after his, um, “ugly” ending at Ole Miss in 2017. Maybe it still will be. Time will tell.
Time has told us that 2020s Auburn has been a mess and a half. At the halfway point of the decade, no Auburn fan could’ve envisioned it would unfold the way that it has. It started by paying the richest buyout ever for an FBS head coach, and then it was followed with 4 consecutive losing seasons with 0 wins against Alabama and Georgia. The most positive development for Auburn in the 2020s was Nick Saban announcing his retirement.
On Monday, one of the first questions that Freeze got was about his 0-4 record against Alabama and Georgia, and why he thinks that can be a different story with those games at home.
“Number one, playing at Jordan-Hare is a definite advantage in those games for sure, and our roster is one that can compete with those teams,” Freeze said. “We’ve been in the games even the first 2 years, but we haven’t found a way to win, and that’s one of the secrets, I think, to our success this year is having guys that we think we’ve brought in that have the combination of all of it, not just skill set, but this guy’s a winner and has been proven to win and now will help us get over the edge in all these close games like those 2 will be.”
There ya have it. Freeze has found the formula to beating Georgia and Alabama at Jordan-Hare. Freeze brought in winners with the right mindset. That’s what’s been holding the program back.
Going from a 5-7 team to Year 2 to back atop the college football world certainly doesn’t happen often, if ever. I’m not sold that’s changing anytime soon.
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.
