Things may get worse before they get a chance to get better for Auburn Tigers football coach Hugh Freeze on the Plains. AU hosts the Georgia Bulldogs and Mizzou Tigers over the next two weekends before traveling to Nashville for a date with the Vanderbilt Commodores.
On3's Andy Staples believes the three ranked opponents Auburn has on the docket are going to further threaten Freeze's standing following two straight losses to start SEC play.
“I thought they were going to win nine, 10 games this year,” Staples said at the 68 Ventures Bowl 1st & 10 Club in Mobile on Monday night, per AL.com. “You look at the talent they had, it looked like the best offensive line Auburn had had in a while. Obviously, their defense was going to be good. And you add Eric Singleton to Cam Coleman (at wide receiver) and you thought, ‘OK, it’s going to be very difficult to cover these guys,’ but it’s a lot of same problems as last year. Now, maybe not the crippling mistakes throwing the ball from the QB, but it’s the crippling mistakes holding the ball from the QB that they seem to be having the problem.
“With Hugh Freeze, it’s interesting because, when it comes to coaches and their jobs, you kind of have to look at their buyouts and the way they’re structured and how much they’re owed. Hugh Freeze has one of the more manageable buyouts in the SEC. So if Auburn were to start out, say, 0-3 in SEC play, which could very well happen this weekend, I think you get a lot of noise.
“The Auburn fans are already mad, but I think at that point it gets pretty bad. And remember, they’ve got to play Missouri, they’ve got to play Vanderbilt, they’ve got to play teams that can beat them and beat them last year. So that’s the issue right there, is if let’s say they lose to Georgia, then it’s how much worse can it get?”
A 16-10 loss to the Texas A&M Aggies and a 24-17 loss to the Oklahoma Sooners are far from bad losses at this point in the season. But losing five of their first eight games and setting the ceiling at seven wins, before the Iron Bowl, no less, puts the Tigers dangerously close to the six-win standard Freeze mistakenly admitted to before the season.
That's a sad failure on Freeze to be thinking about this one week into October. And a tenure-ending failure, at that.
Not that long ago, it'd be completely acceptable to lose to Missouri and Vandy. Now, it's being discussed like a formality a few weeks in advance.