Hugh Freeze calls 2024, 2025 Auburn football recruiting classes ‘really vital’

Auburn football head coach Hugh Freeze knows what the Tigers’ near-coaching hiring from this past November, Lane Kiffin, doesn’t seem to know: you cannot build a successful program through the transfer portal alone.

While Freeze was able to land the nation’s No. 4 transfer portal class, tying LSU for the most 4-star transfer additions (8) in the cycle, he told Auburn Daily’s Zac Blackerby that it’ll be the 2024 and 2025 classes — his first two full cycles on the Plains — that determine the program’s success in the future.

Here’s what the first-year coach told Blackerby at Senior Bowl practice in Mobile ahead of Saturday’s collegiate All-Star game when asked about the improvements along the offensive line and across the board (h/t Auburn Daily’s Lance Dawe):

"“You had to get that somewhat fixed – have we? I don’t know. I know we improved ourselves, but I think the 2024 and 2025 classes are going to be really vital for whether we succeed or not.”"

Hugh Freeze believes Auburn football quarterbacks suffered behind deficient OL

Hugh Freeze has been critical of the current Auburn football quarterback room of late, but he cut them some slack while discussing the offensive line at Senior Bowl practices. Freeze admitted that even getting an accurate read of Robby Ashford’s and Holden Geriner’s (and maybe T.J. Finley’s) abilities because of the lack of talent under center to compete with SEC defensive fronts in 2022:

"“Well, that was the place that you had to try to get fixed first. I don’t know that – when I turned on the film, I don’t know that the quarterbacks are getting a fair evaluation, because they truthfully did not have a lot of protection.”"

There are three incoming graduate transfers (Dillon Wade, Gunner Britton, Avery Jones) from the Group of Five ranks likely to start along the offensive line in 2023, so there are band-aids for this years’ long offensive trench problem.

A full solution will come in the next two high school cycles, though, and Freeze knows that.