12.21.23 Football Articles

[aubiefifty 16,793]

 

[SaltyTiger 7,809]

Don’t really follow recruiting Fiddy. Sounds like a great day for us though. Other than the potato years always felt like we were going to get our fair share. Recall Coach Dye over coffee one morning saying “ you gotta be able to coach em and love ‘em when you get them here”. 
 

Have big day Fiddy

Edited December 21, 2023 by SaltyTiger

[aubiefifty 16,793]

30 minutes ago, SaltyTiger said:

Don’t really follow recruiting Fiddy. Sounds like a great day for us though. Other than the potato years always felt like we were going to get our fair share. Recall Coach Dye over coffee one morning saying “ you gotta be able to coach em and love ‘em when you get them here”. 
 

Have big day Fiddy

that was about all there was salty. let me say i saw parts of the videos on some of our recruits and we have some studs. i have been being lazy mostly. you only have four shopping days for my christmas present salty...................

[aubiefifty 16,793]

 

[aubiefifty 16,793]

 

[aubiefifty 16,793]

 

al.com

 

5-star Auburn high school kicker Towns McGough picks the Tigers

Updated: Dec. 21, 2023, 4:23 p.m.|Published: Dec. 21, 2023, 4:08 p.m.

~2 minutes

---

A long line of elite kickers will continue as Auburn, which landed the signing of hometown kicker Towns McGough.

McGough, who goes to Auburn High School, was named a MaxPreps first team All-American kicker and a 5-star recruit by Kohls’s Kicking Camp. He made 19 of 22 field goals this season with all of his misses coming from beyond 56 yards. He made six field goals of beyond 50 yards and one from 60.

He is the third five-star rated recruit in Auburn’s 2024 signing class, which is now ranked No. 7 in the country by 247Sports.

The right-footed kicker also proved he can make a field goal with his left — just in case.

McGough is taking a preferred walk-on spot with Auburn, choosing to stay home over going to Ole Miss. Despite being a hometown kid, his recruitment to Auburn was not easy. Current Auburn redshirt freshman kicker Alex McPherson is still in line to be the kicker next year.

McGough is set to join a consistent line of NFL-bound kickers including Cody Parkey, Daniel Carlson and Anders Carlson. McPherson did not miss a field goal in 2023 and would appear on track for an NFL kicking job, too, before McGough’s turn. McPherson’s brother Evan is the kicker for the Cincinnati Bengals.

Matt Cohen covers Auburn sports for AL.com. You can follow him on X at @Matt_Cohen_ or email him at mcohen@al.com

If you purchase a product or register for an account through a link on our site, we may receive compensation. By using this site, you consent to our User Agreement and agree that your clicks, interactions, and personal information may be collected, recorded, and/or stored by us and social media and other third-party partners in accordance with our Privacy Policy.

[aubiefifty 16,793]

 

al.com

 

Hugh Freeze started fencing in Auburn’s backyard early. It paid off on Signing Day

Published: Dec. 21, 2023, 1:05 p.m.

7–9 minutes

---

It was July 26 and 5-star Chilton County linebacker Demarcus Riddick sat at a table flanked by his parents.

His mother, celebrating a birthday, dug into a gift bag and pulled out an Auburn hat as Riddick announced his commitment to Hugh Freeze and the Auburn Tigers, who beat out Alabama and Georgia for the commitment of Riddick.

“This is where I want to be for the next three or four years, it feels like home being there,” Riddick said after announcing his commitment to Auburn.

Ironically, Riddick didn’t get an opportunity to experience that home-like feeling until after Hugh Freeze arrived at Auburn eight months prior. Despite Riddick being a coveted prospect less than an hour and a half away from Auburn’s campus, he was never pursued by the Tigers under former head coach Bryan Harsin.

But such was the reputation of Harsin, who is said to have paid little to no attention to many of the high school football programs in Auburn’s backyard.

“He came in under COVID so you kinda give him a pass in year one,” said Erik Speakman, former head coach of Opelika High School, which is located just 20 minutes from Auburn’s campus. “But then you really never saw much of those guys. And it wasn’t just him, but the whole staff.”

Harsin’s recruiting efforts – or lack thereof – played a big role in he and the program’s rapid decline. After less than two seasons on The Plains, Harsin was axed on Halloween in 2022, putting an abrupt end to a tenure that lasted less than two full seasons.

By that point, however, Harsin had already left Auburn’s roster with a pair of black eyes and a gruesome amount of attrition, making for a steep uphill battle for whoever took over as Auburn’s next head coach.

Come November of 2022, Freeze was announced as Auburn’s head coach, therefore inheriting said uphill battle. And Freeze learned quick that he and his still-developing coaching staff were going to have their hands full trying to get Auburn’s roster back on track.

“I don’t want to be negative,” Freeze told local media members before taking the podium at SEC Media Days in July. “Just… it was off from what I believe an Auburn roster should look like. Recruiting has been a little more challenging than I thought for Auburn, because of what I believe Auburn should be and what it’s proven it can be.”

Eight days after Freeze muttered those words in a tiny breakout room somewhere in the Grand Hyatt Hotel in Nashville, Riddick announced his commitment to Auburn, giving the Tigers their first 5-star commit since Owen Pappoe in 2019.

But perhaps more importantly, the commitment of Riddick symbolized one of the first fence posts Freeze and the Tigers’ current coaching staff put in the ground as they set out to build a fence around the perimeter of Auburn’s backyard – something Harsin and his staff never bothered to do.

The June 15th commitment of 4-star linebacker Joseph Phillips, who comes by way of Booker T. Washington High School in Tuskegee, was another critical piece in Freeze’s fence-building efforts.

No stranger to the grind of recruiting in the SEC, however, Freeze knew there was more he had to do to try and stake claim of his territory.

Back in August, Jackson High School football coach Cody Fluornoy and Opelika’s Speakman told AL.com that Freeze and other members of Auburn’s coaching staff had paid their programs a visit during the offseason.

No, the Tigers weren’t heavily recruiting a player at either of their programs, but it was still a sight for sore eyes considering neither prep program received much attention from Auburn under Harsin.

But that wasn’t going to be the case under Freeze, whose previous SEC experience from his time at Ole Miss likely taught him two things: the importance of winning recruiting battles in your home state and the quality of high school talent in the state of Alabama.

“You really better do your homework,” Speakman said in August, days after Auburn’s big recruiting win in Riddick. “And I think that’s what you’re seeing now with Coach Freeze is his familiarity with the SEC from his time at Ole Miss — Just the emphasis on getting in-state guys that wanna be at Auburn and wanna play for Auburn, and then those guys in Georgia and some guys from Florida.”

Looking at 247Sports’ prospect rankings for the 2024 class, there were five players from the state of Alabama ranked inside the top-26, proving just how nutrient dense the soil of the Yellowhammer State is in terms of football talent.

Texas was the only state to with more players in the top-26 as the Lonestar State boasted six.

Of those five Alabama natives ranked inside the top-26, Freeze and the Tigers landed a pair of them in 5-star wide receiver Cam Coleman, who ranks as the No. 1 player in the state of Alabama, and fellow 5-star wide receiver Perry Thompson, who ranks as the fifth-best player in the state of Alabama.

Meanwhile, Nick Saban and Alabama are on track to land a pair of their own as 5-star athlete Jaylen Mbakwe signed his letter of intent with the Crimson Tide Wednesday, while 5-star wide receiver Ryan Williams remains committed to the Tide, despite the relentless pursuit of Freeze and the Tigers.

Williams, ranked as the second-best player in the state of Alabama, says he won’t sign his letter of intent until February, meaning there are still two months left in Williams’ recruitment, which is bound to come down to the wire.

Now, if you take a magnifying glass to the state of Alabama exclusively, you’ll find that the Tigers landed nine of the state’s top-25 prospects Wednesday as Coleman, Thompson, Riddick, Phillips, 4-star wide receivers Malcolm Simmons and Bryce Cain, 4-star defensive back A’Mon Lane-Ganus, 4-star safety Kaleb Harris and 4-star defensive lineman Malik Blocton all signed their letters of intent with the Tigers.

Auburn’s rival in Tuscaloosa, meanwhile, saw five of the state’s top-25 prospects sign their name on the dotted line, cementing their plans to play for Saban and the Crimson Tide.

During his press conference Wednesday afternoon, Freeze didn’t want to jump to any conclusions – especially since the dust off the day had still all but settled.

“I don’t know if we won the state this year or not,” Freeze said. “I don’t know how that’s determined.”

And to be fair to Freeze, that likely won’t be determined until February, when both Auburn and Alabama put finishing touches on their 2024 recruiting classes.

Nonetheless, after inking 10 high school players from the state of Alabama Wednesday, Freeze and Auburn’s coaching staff are steadily adding to their fenced-in backyard – a home improvement project that started back in June and July with the commitments of Phillips and Riddick.

“We certainly want to in the future of winning our share if not more than our share in this state,” Freeze said Wednesday. “I thought Joseph (Phillips) and (Demarcus) Riddick really helped kick-start that.”

If you purchase a product or register for an account through a link on our site, we may receive compensation. By using this site, you consent to our User Agreement and agree that your clicks, interactions, and personal information may be collected, recorded, and/or stored by us and social media and other third-party partners in accordance with our Privacy Policy.

[aubiefifty 16,793]

 

al.com

 

Hugh Freeze gave up play-calling duties to recruit. Was it worth it?

Updated: Dec. 21, 2023, 9:09 a.m.|Published: Dec. 21, 2023, 9:07 a.m.

6–8 minutes

---

Before he’d ever coached a game at Auburn, before he’d been through a single fall camp practice, before he’d landed the commitments of top prospects like five-star receivers Perry Thompson or Cam Coleman, head coach Hugh Freeze stood on at a podium in July at the Grand Hyatt hotel in Nashville to say he was giving up playcalling duties all in an effort to focus on recruiting.

On that afternoon at SEC Media Days, Freeze said he was giving up playcalling duties to offensive coordinator Philip Montgomery because he no longer felt he was the elite play-caller he used to be. But leading up to Auburn’s Sept. 30 game against Georgia, Freeze said in reality the decision would be more so to allow him time to be on the road, to be calling recruits and to be game-planning for years to come instead of just the week ahead.

His belief centered on an understanding that what he needed to make Auburn competitive within in the SEC wasn’t on the team’s 2023 roster. Throughout the season, Freeze has talked about the team’s so-called talent gap to the rest of the SEC. So he focused instead on building for years to come.

The first season of that choice culminated Wednesday with National Signing Day. Auburn signed 25 total players on Wednesday in a class that is now ranked No. 7 nationally, according to 247Sports.

“So, I think the time I chose to maybe spend away from the offensive side of the ball, it paid some dividends there,” Freeze said Wednesday.

Freeze spending time outside of the gritty game-planning details allowed him to bring in the best wide receiver class in Auburn’s history with five-star recruits Thompson and Coleman as well as four-star recruits Malcolm Simmons and Bryce Cain.

“I think I couldn’t have asked any more out of the effort that it took to try, in a short amount of time, to get into the battles for the top guys,” Freeze said. “Because truthfully the elite schools are always a couple years ahead. We had to close the gap on a lot to get in in those battles. We didn’t win all of them but we sure were in them.”

The 2024 class is Auburn’s first top-10 group since 2020. It’s the first Auburn class to contain a five-star recruit since linebacker Owen Pappoe in 2019.

“I thought the effort that was put into trying to make our first class here a top-10 class, which was our goal— I don’t know where we stand with that, I can’t keep up with all of that,” Freeze said. “That was our goal, is in Year One to have a top-10 class and in Year Two to have a top-five class.”

Though the belief Freeze seemed to have at the beginning of the season — to serve as somewhat of a CEO while tending to all the necessary parts of rebuilding Auburn — isn’t exactly what came to fruition.

Freeze’s appearance ahead of the Georgia game on Auburn’s weekly Tiger Talk radio show laid out his dilemma. By that point in the season, Auburn was 3-1 but had clearly shown its struggles offensively — especially as that week Auburn was coming off a 27-10 loss to Texas A&M where the only touchdown Auburn scored came from linebacker Eugene Asante returning a fumble.

On the show, Freeze said he was having to take on a larger role with the play-calling and the offense as a whole. As the season went on, Freeze talked frequently about how difficult it was for him to not be as hands-on as he’s been in the past. This was the first season where Freeze has been a head coach while also not serving as the primary play-caller on offense.

But in order to help with the struggling offense of the 2023 season, that meant Freeze could no longer spend as much time in recruiting. Auburn had dozens of recruits on campus the week of the Georgia game — just as it did in home games later in the season against Ole Miss and Alabama.

And after Auburn lost to Ole Miss, dropping to 3-4 for the season with an anemic offense, Freeze had to make a change. Three weeks later, Auburn then on a three-game winning streak, Freeze sat down after his 48-10 win over Arkansas and described how after the Ole Miss game, he came into the offensive staff meetings and firmly stated they were going to play the game his way. No questions about it.

“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 after beating Arkansas. “And that’s probably the turning point.”

That meant adding in more of the run-pass-option and high-tempo schemes Freeze has pushed for. And when that change occurred, Auburn’s offense began its best run of play for the whole season.

Albeit, the passing offense still finished as the worst in the SEC. That’s why Freeze needed wide receivers. He believes adding talent like Thompson and Coleman around quarterback Payton Thorne will be that solution.

Whether his added playcalling involvement cost Auburn any recruiting battles isn’t clear. It would certainly be a stretch to suggest Auburn only landed one of its three top flip targets on Signing Day because Freeze spent more time working on the game-planning and play-calling as the year progressed.

And what Freeze’s role next year could look like is unclear. Montgomery is still the offensive coordinator and, to this point, nothing concrete has suggested Auburn plans to cut ties.

Montgomery will be made available to the media on the eve of the Music City Bowl in Nashville. That will be the first time for any clarity surrounding exactly what his role looked like once Freeze became more involved.

It’s now on Freeze to determine what he wants his involvement to look like, and how to balance his time, going forward.

Matt Cohen covers Auburn sports for AL.com. You can follow him on X at @Matt_Cohen_ or email him at mcohen@al.com

[aubiefifty 16,793]

 

al.com

 

Auburn gets much-needed OL commitment with 3-star Favour Edwin

Updated: Dec. 21, 2023, 10:35 a.m.|Published: Dec. 20, 2023, 10:37 p.m.

2–3 minutes

---

 

Auburn signee Favour Edwin highlights from Eagles Landing Christian Academy

After Auburn made Favour Edwin’s shortlist on Nov. 2, Hugh Freeze and the Tigers won the race and earned both his commitment and his signature as Edwin chose Auburn late on Wednesday night.

Auburn beat out the likes of Alabama, Clemson, Florida and Georgia Tech for the 3-star offensive line prospect out of Eagles Landing Christian Academy in McDonough, Ga.

Measuring 6-foot-8 and 290 pounds, Edwin ranks as the 56th-ranked offensive tackle in the country and the 69th-best high school prospect out of the state of Georgia, according to 247Sports, which adds Edwin just started playing football in the spring of 2023 after an early background in basketball.

According to 247Sports, on August 16, Freeze and the Tigers became the second to offer Edwin, coming on the heels of an offer from Nick Saban and the Crimson Tide.

Edwin went on to take visits to The Plains on Sept. 30 as Auburn hosted Georgia and on Nov. 25 as Auburn hosted Alabama. By his second visit, Edwin had already trimmed down his list five teams, including the Tigers and Crimson Tide.

Set to lose three starting offensive linemen in Gunner Britton, Avery Jones and Kam Stutts, Auburn has offered a healthy handful of offensive linemen in the transfer portal.

With the addition of Edwin, Freeze and the Tigers are set to welcome at least three new faces to the offensive line room as Edwin is slated to join 4-star DeAndre Carter and 3-star JUCO prospect Seth Wilfred. This number could swell, should the Tigers land an offensive lineman out of the transfer portal.

If you purchase a product or register for an account through a link on our site, we may receive compensation. By using this site, you consent to our User Agreement and agree that your clicks, interactions, and personal information may be collected, recorded, and/or stored by us and social media and other third-party partners in accordance with our Privacy Policy.