The Hugh Freeze hire made sense.
Brian Harsin only made it a year and a half on The Plains, and Auburn turned to Freeze. He’d won at Ole Miss and gone 34-15 at Liberty. I wouldn’t call Freeze the most likeable coach in SEC history, but he certainly looked like a high floor coach who could recruit and win at Auburn.
He didn’t.
After a 15-19 start that included a 6-16 SEC mark without an offensive pulse, Auburn made the move to fire him. Oddly, LSU only got one swing at Freeze as the Auburn coach. It was the Jayden Daniels Heisman team, and the result was a 48-18 beatdown. Candidly, scoring just 18 points on that Matt House defense was probably a harbinger for Freeze’s termination.
It’s a new era for War Eagle.
NICER NEIGHBORS
When Freeze took the job, Auburn may have been on the baddest block in college football history.
Georgia was six weeks from winning its second national title in a row. Saban was still at Alabama and making College Football Playoffs. Those two were on every schedule and felt like Auburn’s measuring stick.
Now, things feel a little bit different. Saban is gone, and Kalen DeBoer has lost eight games in two years. Saban lost eight in his final five seasons combined. Georgia feels mortal. The problem is that Auburn has only beaten Georgia once in 13 years and Alabama twice in 12 years.
Since the madness that was the Prayer in Jordan Hare and the Kick Six in 2013, Alabama and Georgia are a combined 22-3 against Auburn. That has to change for Auburn to achieve anything of significance.
GOLESH’S GAME
We’ve probably gone too far without mentioning Alex Golesh. He’s the new head coach at Auburn. His route to The Plains has been a long one. Golesh was a football coach for 20 years before his first head coaching position.
He got that at South Florida where he went 23-15. When the Bulls hammered Boise State 34-7 on opening weekend and followed that up with a 18-16 win in The Swamp over what was supposed to be Billy Napier’s best Florida team, Golesh’s name heated up.
The finish in Tampa wasn’t especially strong. South Florida lost to Memphis, Navy and Old Dominion in the final six weeks, but it was enough to land Golesh the SEC head job.
He’s another coach with an offensive background, and he’s got work to do on that side of the ball.
ANEMIC OFFENSE
Auburn averaged 18.5 points per game against SEC teams last year. Only Florida and South Carolina were worse. In fact, only 13 of 133 were worse against conference foes.
The passing game was the problem. Auburn threw for just 197 yards per game which was worse than everyone in the SEC but Missouri. Insert Byrum Brown who set 15 school records at South Florida where he played for three seasons under Golesh. He’s got 32 starts to his name and was the only quarterback not named Jayden Daniels to throw for 3,000 yards and run for 800 more in 2023. He did it again in 2025.
Brown won’t have all-everything wide out Cam Coleman who bolted for Texas. Eleven South Florida Bulls transferred to Auburn on offense. Two more on defense.
Golesh and Brown are in charge of getting this era off to a good start. That begins with a battle with Baylor in Atlanta on opening weekend.
