aucom96

Glad they got a hire before spring, but I just don’t want to hear about “building a culture” anymore.

QB is a need. Thorne is not SEC level and that will continue to equal losses. D-line is thin, linebackers thin, we got a couple of offensive linemen who can possibly start, but stress on possibly and we’re still thin there. WR is going to be very thin on experience. I just don’t see it. To me, he looks like he’s gambling heavily on freshman at too many key positions…and he’ll have to renegotiate pay with most of them going into year three.

The game has changed. There are no longer guarantees of keeping any roster together longer than one regular season, so talk of "getting his players" is less a four year proposition than it once was. Hugh has done a good job recruiting high school. He has done a poor job in the portal. If he wants to make it four years, that will have to change, because every team is going to get their talent poached year to year. It's the new reality of college football and if he decides to leave the coaching to his assistants again this coming season, year three's seat is going to be scorching hot.

Durkin hasn't been at any stop more than two years for most of his career. I don't see him as a stability hire, either. Waiting on Kiffen is the only thing that makes sense. I haven't seen any homerrun hires mentioned in this search, so I'm hoping we just get someone in for the spring and get this over with.

What was the last team we had with reliable shooters?

It’s all a risk right now, but I think it’s a bad idea to ignore either side. You’re going to have to re-recruit your roster every single year, but Auburn also can’t ignore the holes we have going into the next couple of years. Freeze obviously feels comfortable with the patience of the money men, but the fans will wear thin if he isn’t in a clearly better place in year three. We lose a lot of starting pieces going into this season and offensive improvement is no guarantee with the inexperience at key positions. If some of that high school talent gets bought away going into year three, Hugh will have a lot of ground to make up in the portal, which he hasn’t handled all that well to date. Success as a head coach to me seems more about overall roster management than purely high school recruiting. Freeze is gambling a bit. We’ll see how that works out.

The Harsin hire was supposed to address "culture". It made it more toxic than it has in many years. Our response was to hire a controversial head coach. More culture problems developed within his first staff. If we hire a guy known for creating a toxic culture moreso than anything his defenses have accomplished, it's hard to take the "culture" talk seriously.

I feel like before the OM communications department got a hold of it, it was basically this:

Freeze will sink or swim with whoever he hires at this point. I just hope whoever he hires knows how to do more than only recruit.

No kidding. The last time bama had uncertainty in their football program, Finebaum got big enough to get on satellite radio and eventually ESPN just from their fans alone.

Has that guy ever been a part of a major football program that wasn't overflowing with disfunction?

We are just not a very forward thinking program. The way things are, there are two primary considerations for a head coach. They have to be a salesman to keep the booster money flowing. Freeze has proven good at this. They also have to be able to prioritize and manage the portal. Freeze is terrible at this and it's going to become a slow leak on any recruiting gains he makes. NIL has allowed these kids to be what they are... amateurs looking to land a payday. As we speak, teams are shelling out major money to land QBs like Thorne or G5 skill players with some stats to fill holes. The biggest bank accounts will wait out freshman years and head hunt blue-chips in the portal. Right now, you've got highly recruited players on rosters seeing Jack State talent get paydays and I can't imagine it's good for team chemistry. That will require a lot of management skills from coaches to keep locker rooms stable. I think Freeze stinks at this. It also doesn't seem like Freeze enjoys taking charge of his staff. He's a high school coach that had a blip on the radar and he's in over his head. Unless he surrounds himself with pros who know how to manage like pros, we're going to have a hard time getting back up off the mat. This is no longer a three, four year build. It's year to year. Every year has to count.

They’re tied together, as Hugh will learn with his first big class soon enough.

It's an important distinction, though, because he had a long time without pressure to let our coverage collapse and get that receiver open in the back corner against an off balance defender. That was not desperation. Desperation would have been what would have happened if we would have brought pressure and forced him to hurry his decision. But, that's not what happened.

That wasn't a hail mary.

Ok. We are bad on the lines, particularly offense and haven't seen much progress on repairing that. We lack a QB. Our receivers will get an upgrade in first year talent next season, theoretically, but who will throw them the ball? Running backs are decent to good. Special teams will be more of a question mark after this year. Secondary loses some players. Schedule gets tougher, conference gets tougher. Add to that we have a head coach who likes to passive-aggressively attack his own staff and shrug off responsibility. We're recruiting well, but from now on, that's only a one-year projection for any major talent. We're not doing very well in the portal, to date. Our own head coach has repeatedly suggested we lack leadership and I think he is a key part of that issue. Games like NMSU and Maryland are not flukes, they're warning signs and I really found Freeze's response to this bowl loss unsettling. He is going to have to demonstrate that this is HIS team, and to date I don't think he has done that. If he can change that and show some actual improvement and progress ON the field, I'll be much more enthusiastic about the direction of this team. But in this NIL/portal era, things have to turn around a lot faster than Freeze seems to count on or you're just stuck in a hole.

I wouldn't waste any significant money trying to reruit this Liberty QB, but if he can be brought in at a reasonable rate, it would be worth the competition. I think the portal has too many once again seeing G5 players with a heavy dose of orange bias, but I don't think we have an SEC level QB currently on the roster, so the competition would be welcome.

How is this completely decimated roster suddenly going to have enough talent, depth and experience for it to be “our year” in a mere two seasons when we can’t even find a pulse with equal or better talent now? Do you actually think Auburn fans haven’t been patient?

And some act like we’re playing with Sunbelt level talent at every position. Neither are true and Freeze underachieved his first season, to put it kindly. He’s got two more to produce results on the field. I hope he puts more effort into that side of things going forward.

Unless we really score big in the portal, I’m guessing another 6-6 season. That factors in some tough road games with more stable SEC programs we traditionally should beat and doesn’t count for the head-scratching blowouts like we saw fro Freeze this year. We could go as high as 8 wins and as low as 5.

Doubtful. He'll have to pay increasing money to hang onto every bit of his recruiting wins every season. Next year will likely be similar to this, record wise, (as you said) and a lot more of these players are going to start listening to the critics. He drops a couple more NMSU/Maryland type games next year and how many of these top players are going to buy Freeze's vision? How much can we afford to make sure they do? 2025 will be the last year for Freeze to prove himself. At that point, the money will either be satisfied with a mediocre puppet or be forced to get a real coach.

It means your team looks like a joke. It means rival coaches have more fodder to convince recruits you are a second rate program. It means you can't motivate your players. I heard this same line all through Gus' tenure. Hugh is a similar creature, apparently. He's got two more seasons to get better. That includes winning these bowl games.

Down 24 and running it up the gut.