Auburn fans rail against Dan Lanning replacing Hugh Freeze suggestion
One Auburn football fan suggested Dan Lanning as the one head coaching option that’d be preferable to Hugh Freeze, the incumbent first-year HC coming off one of the biggest upset losses in college football all season to New Mexico State.
“The only way I would be on board with firing Hugh any time soon is if we threw everything we had at Dan Lanning,” said the fan, not understanding the wrath that’d be raised in the aftermath of firing off that opinion.
“(Stuff) like this is why Auburn has had poison in the water for years,” one poster prefaced in response before saying, “Half the fan base has no patience or can look at a roster with a realistic evaluation. Last week hurt, no doubt, and if it happens again, yeah, I’m there too. Auburn doesn’t have the difference makers when it counts!”
“A third massive buyout since 2020 and more for the nation to laugh at as ‘Auburn being Auburn’? I don’t think so,” said another.
“You must have forgotten that you’re in a bidding war with Texas A&M’s oil money,” another poster prefaced before saying, “Not a chance they are even thinking about this with Freeze.”
“If A&M doesn’t have enough money to pull Lanning from Oregon, he would NEVER come here,” said another regarding Texas A&M’s failed bid to land Lanning.
Hugh Freeze has an undying support of Auburn football fans, for better or for worse
There’s a lot of confidence in the job Freeze has done on the recruiting trail, but the results need to bear out on the field to confirm that it’s a real success, to begin with. Losing to New Mexico State isn’t going to change someone’s mind singlehandedly, but Cam Coleman, Malcolm Simmons, and Perry Thompson aren’t going to forget watching fans file out of Jordan-Hare Stadium early with emptiness in their eyes.
It’s not time to dump Freeze and it’s not time to give up on the entire coaching staff just yet either. Sure, Philip Montgomery is a lame duck at this point, no longer serving as the primary play-caller, but wanting Ron Roberts gone means there’s not much faith in anything Freeze is doing from a personnel standpoint.
The defense will improve with more time under the same schemes, and the offense could improve solely from not allowing any of the current 2024 wideout class to flip; even if what they saw in Week 12 on November 18 was brutal.