Auburn’s 2024 schedule began with five straight home games. The Tigers are currently 2-2, but those victories came against FCS-level Alabama A&M and a winless New Mexico squad, leaving more questions than answers ahead of next week’s visit from a resurgent Oklahoma team.
Head coach Hugh Freeze may point to quarterback play as the main problem, but the real issue starts with him.
Does Auburn Have a Hugh Freeze Problem?
Most will point to Auburn’s woes beginning with starting QB Payton Thorne throwing four interceptions against Cal in Week 2. But it really began when Freeze stepped onto campus.
The Bryan Harsin era is one the program hopes to erase, and there were few head coaches fans wouldn’t have been happy with at the time. Yet, Freeze’s offensive acumen — his offenses at Arkansas State, Ole Miss, and Liberty averaged 32.8 points and over 450 yards per game — gave hope that the Tigers could quickly return to their winning ways.
At his introductory press conference in November 2022, Freeze said, “I do think I have a gift to help develop quarterbacks. I think we can turn it fairly fast with the new world we’re in.”
Two years later, it’s safe to say he has yet to fulfill that promise.
Last summer, Freeze announced he would step back from play-calling for the first time in his head coaching career to prioritize closing the talent gap between Auburn and the rest of the SEC through recruiting.
The immediate results were middling at best.
He brought in Michigan State transfer Payton Thorne, who was two years from his record-setting 11-2 season at Michigan State, in which he threw for 3,240 yards, 27 TDs, and 10 INTs, to compete with incumbent QB Robby Ashford for the starting job.
Thorne “won,” but the two split reps for the first seven games of the season before Ashford was handed the reigns against Ole Miss … until he was pulled after an INT.
After the Week 8 contest, the Tigers’ fourth loss in a row, Freeze took a larger role in offensive game-planning. The result? A three-game winning streak and a 48-10 explosion over Arkansas. When speaking to reporters following the contest, he discussed his increased involvement.
“We had a dang chance to win a few other games, and I wish I had put my foot down earlier and said, ‘This is the only thing I feel comfortable being able to help. If we operate like this, I can help,’” Freeze said. “And that’s probably the turning point.”
Auburn finished the regular season 6-6 — the program’s fourth straight campaign with six or fewer wins. Still, the team’s play down the stretch left the fanbase with some optimism, especially with Freeze saying he’d remain a key part of the offensive play-calling alongside new OC Derrick Nix.
“I’m not saying I’m calling it all,” Freeze said this summer. “Nix knows it. But I know I can, and that gives me a comfort level, ‘All right, we’re struggling, let me have this for a minute. I know what I want to do,’ and a head coach has that priority to do that.”
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However, the head coach hitched his wagon to Thorne, declaring last December that he wouldn’t bring in a transfer QB to supplant Thorne.
“I’m probably not the greatest portal recruiter that there is. I don’t know. I like developing players,” Freeze said. “I felt like we could put some pieces around Throne that would allow him to reach his potential. I’ve seen it on film … he knows that he has to produce. We don’t run from that. … I’m excited and optimistic you are going to see a good product from him.”
He stayed true to his word, but he shouldn’t have.
Four signal-callers took reps in the spring: Thorne, redshirt sophomore Holden Geriner, redshirt freshman Hank Brown, and four-star true freshman Walker White. Instead of Thorne pacing the field, the QB battle extended into August. He still won the job, largely by default, and the results have been disastrous.
After a 73-3 drubbing of Alabama A&M in Week 1, some believed Auburn’s offense had reached a new level — it was a facade. In Week 2, Auburn lost 21-14 to Cal, with Thorne throwing four interceptions.
Auburn legend and former Heisman Trophy winner ripped the program on his “4th&1 With Cam Newton” podcast, saying “It’s the coach’s fault just as much as it is the player’s. More of the coach’s fault because that’s the person you’re putting your job on the line for.”
Freeze addressed the outing the following week, putting nearly all the blame on the sixth-year QB.
“It’s really hard for me to not play a young man that consistently is the best performer in practice. His execution of the offense, which has been pretty clear to all of us, that throughout camp and throughout the practice weeks and everything, his performance and his understanding of what we want to do has been better than the others.
“Having said that, you have to carry that over into the games. You have to. I did witness him play really good football in some big games last year. We’ve also witnessed the opposite of that in some games.
“Let me say this about the calls from the staff — from [OC Derrick] Nix and [QBs coach] Kent [Austin] — there was some really good calls made in that game, and we had people running wide open, and Payton missed three of those that changed the game in the first half.”
By the end of the week, Freeze announced he’d hand the reigns of the offense to Brown against New Mexico. All he did was complete 17 of 25 passes for 235 yards and four touchdowns with no turnovers. While Freeze was proud of his young QB’s showing, he wanted to see how Brown performed against SEC competition.
When he did, the results were — say it with me — disastrous.
The redshirt freshman completed just seven passes while throwing three picks on 13 attempts in the first half against Arkansas, forcing Freeze to pull him in favor of Thorne, who threw another INT to end the third quarter.
At the podium for the postgame conference, Freeze ripped the QB play … again.
“I was anxious to see how Hank performed in SEC play. I don’t define our players by performance as an individual. I’m judged on that. But Hank was missing open guys and throwing into coverage. We’re not doing a very good job coaching the quarterbacks right now.
“It just — I don’t have the words. It’s just sickening that we can’t take care of the football on offense. I’ve got to get that fixed. It’s just discouraging. … It’s miserable to watch that.
“I know that there’s people open, and I know that we’re running the football. We gotta find a guy that won’t throw it to the other team. … The scheme is what most everybody is running. But you’ve got to have good play at quarterback.
“We’ve got to look at ourselves as coaches first. I don’t think it’s the scheme.”
However, Bo Wallace, a former third-team All-SEC QB who played for Freeze at Ole Miss, loosened up his fingers and fired away on X:
“We’re approaching the point that he’s thrown so many quarterbacks under the bus that maybe no one wants to play for him?? Don’t be a coward and blame it on kids.”
Additionally, Ashford, who transferred from Auburn to South Carolina this offseason, took a shot at his former coach in a postgame conference after the Gamecocks’ 50-7 win over Akron.
“Man, Coach [Dowell Loggains] and [Mike] Shula have taught me so much in my eight months here that I haven’t learned in any of my years anywhere else.”
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It wasn’t the first time, either, as when he was asked in the summer what was different about South Carolina and Auburn, Ashford’s immediate response was, “The coaches have actually developed me as a passer.”
It wasn’t hyperbole either, as Ashford’s mechanics (has a snappier release and far better footwork) are vastly different from his time with the Tigers.
Freeze’s QBs have thrown 294 TDs to 156 INTs in his 12 years as a head coach — that’s a per-season TD-to-INT ratio of 24:13. Moreover, Auburn’s eight picks this season are second only to East Carolina’s nine in the FBS and are three more than the next closest SEC program — Florida (5), which is another embarrassing loss away from firing HC Billy Napier.
Under Freeze, the Tigers are 3-6 in the SEC, and their only consistent trait has been their uncertainty in the passing game, something he said is “getting frustrating and old.” Well, Freeze, the fanbase is already saying the same about you.
Until the 54-year-old coach acknowledges his role in the team’s struggles and embraces the responsibility that comes with leadership, Auburn’s hopes of returning to prominence will remain just that — hopes rather than reality.
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