Hugh Freeze and his brain trust once again went away from the run game when it counted and put the game once again in quarterback Payton Thorne's inept hands. Yes Vandy stacked the line of scrimmage but I have not seen Auburn yet this season go into a two tight end power set for an entire series. A formation with two tight ends, two wide receivers, and one running back.
This formation seems to fit Auburn's talent, i.e. getting tight ends Rivaldo Fairweather and Luke Deal in the game at the same time along with Cam Coleman and Keandre Lambert-Smith plus Jarquez Hunter. You can also go out of shotgun with Hunter next to quarterback or stack receivers or tight ends to one side, whatever. You have a running formation with more blocking and you have three dangerous receivers, four if you count Hunter. You have Deal the extra blocker to help protect.
You pound Vanderbilt the whole day using more run-based formations like this after they had a hard game at Texas there is NO WAY they do not break! The do not have the depth or the strength to stand up to that. Instead Freeze chooses to run the majority of the time out of pass formations and shocker they get stuffed. He simply will not commit to the running game even after last week. Obviously we can say the strategy in the losses is the rule and last week was an exception. Again Auburn is still bigger and stronger than Vanderbilt but Hugh Freeze is a purely finesse offensive football coach and he is never going to change. You give him better players he will win a few more games but he will never in a million years come close to a championship.
There is little else than can be said now other than this has now become an historically bad season. Auburn has now lost to Vanderbilt at home for the first time ever. Auburn will finish the season with one conference win and NONE at home. Auburn will finish the season as the WORST TEAM IN THE SEC. The worst team in the new SIXTEEN TEAM SEC. Auburn will have it's fourth losing season in a row, the first time that has happened since the last 1940s. This is all started with the absolute brain-dead morons who gave Gus his fifty million dollar contract in 2017 and continued with the WORST EVER leadership that hired Bryan Harsin. All of that along with horrifically bad coaching the whole time has DESTROYED this once proud program. The inept presidents, the unqualified athletic directors, and the grifter coaches all have taken their money and left Auburn with nothing.
This was never going to be a great or even a very good team. All Freeze had to do was recruit and then do a little, just a little good coaching to get a few wins and not let the train go off the track. He has utterly FAILED. This team is not very good but it is much better than a 4-8 and 1-7 team. Freeze has gone on and on about his recruiting but Auburn will most likely be worse off when the smoke clears by spring practice in 2025. How much of the recruiting class ESPECIALLY THE OFFENSIVE LINEMEN will be at Auburn? How many of the good players on the current roster will leave? Everything I write here is just simple logic and the players know these facts better than the fans do. On top of that I guarantee hundreds of sharks are already circling Auburn's recruits and roster. Blood is in the water.
I have been an Auburn fan my entire life. My parents graduated from Auburn. I graduated from Auburn. My brother graduated from Auburn. My oldest son graduated from Auburn. I went to my first Auburn game in 1978. I have been to so many more since then. There have been so many great moments. There have also been some gut wrenching losses and bad seasons but nothing like the last four years. There just does not seem to be ANY HOPE of having a really good football team anytime soon. Heck there is not much hope of even having an average football team anytime soon. Hugh Freeze has showed us what he can do over twenty plus games now. This is it. HE... IS... NOT... GOING... TO... CHANGE. There has not been ONE big win in two whole seasons. He should have at least ONE!
I was completely wrong about him. My post about him becoming head coach was complete garbage. The one I wrote about Bryan Harsin was garbage. I am sorry, the next time Auburn hires a new football coach I am going to just assume he is another complete fraud. So many of these football coaches just seem to be con men who luck their way into these ridiculous contacts that pay them tens of millions of dollars even if they completely fail. It has just been disappointment after disappointment for over a DECADE now. In all that time you can count the big wins on ONE HAND. Other than that it has just been a few scoops of minor wins and huge helpings of every kind of loss imaginable. Even the "good" seasons have turned out bad. Auburn has only won three minor bowl games since 2010 against Virginia, Memphis, and Purdue. The Tigers have only had about the same number of winning conference records as well over that time.
Auburn football is in big trouble. It is facing it's worse crisis... ever. It doesn't seem like Auburn can fire Freeze but continuing on down this road seems like a waste of time. In fact I know it is a waste of time. However the problem is why in the world would I think the leadership at Auburn is capable of hiring a good football coach? We all know they cannot do it. They will just hire another con man who will end up with another twenty mil and leave the program in worse shape than when they came. Again at this moment I just do not see any hope. I guess that is what four straight losing seasons and finally losing to Vanderbilt at home will do to you...
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