Auburn football head coach Hugh Freeze will have to control his look of envy as he stares across the sidelines on Saturday, October 21 at Ole Miss head coach Lane Kiffin — who runs the type of up-tempo offense with the Rebels Freeze could only dream of running given his personnel. AL.com’s Ainslie Lee views it this way, at the very least, comparing Freeze’s arrival on the Plains to a car guy finding that the vehicle he inherited is nothing like the ol’ reliable he had in his hometown of Oxford, Mississippi.
“Unfortunately for Freeze, when he arrived at Auburn, he learned quick that the car he was inheriting didn’t have the horsepower it needed to go as fast as he’d like,” Lee prefaced before saying, “And the parts store – or transfer portal – couldn’t get him the parts he needed quick enough to help him bridge the gap. But still, Freeze has tried hard to implement both tempo- and RPO-style offenses at Auburn.
“Meanwhile, when Kiffin and the 13th-ranked Ole Miss Rebels come to Jordan-Hare Stadium Saturday night, Freeze will have to control his look of envy because Kiffin gets to navigate a fast and shiny car that closely resembles the one Freeze once drove in Oxford, Miss.”
Auburn football could propel to nearly the same spot as Ole Miss with an upset win in Week 8
While the line has moved in Ole Miss’s favor, Auburn is still just a one-score underdog for most sportsbooks. For all the talk of the Tigers being in the SEC’s basement and the Rebels having an outside chance at an SEC West crown, there’s the reality that an Auburn win in Week 8 upends these narratives almost immediately.
AU would have one less conference win than Mississippi, but they’d equally have zero chance of making the College Football Playoff and only a faint hope of catching either LSU or Alabama in the standings.