Auburn Tigers football coach Hugh Freeze has escaped two underperforming seasons, the 2024 campaign brutally so, without much damage. Many had him pegged to return for 2026, regardless of the 2025 season's results, before AU made a late-season run that included a pleasant upset of a ranked Texas A&M Aggies squad.
CBS Sports' Tom Fornelli believes it won't take long for Auburn's dormant historically quick trigger to return.
"Freeze's place in our rankings was not frozen. In fact, it thawed quite a bit, as he fell 14 spots after going 5-7 at Auburn last year. Through two seasons, he's only 5-11 in SEC play, and if we go back to his final year at Ole Miss, Freeze is 7-17 in the SEC. Given how quick Auburn has been to pull the trigger before, you wonder what could happen if the Tigers don't make a push in the SEC this season," Fornelli wrote.
Freeze did himself no favors when discussing his program's expectations for the 2025 season, claiming a bowl game was the goal.
“I’m not a fool. I think we’ve got to go to a bowl game," Freeze said in response to The Next Round Live's Lance Taylor.
Freeze made it to year three because Bryan Harsin couldn't. The program's brain trust doesn't want to waste all of the donor spending on coaching buyouts. Gus Malzahn's is off the books and Harsin's is gone in July.
Freeze isn't guaranteed to stick if he can't figure things out early in 2025. Fornelli knows it, and the Auburn family largely recognizes it -- especially following comments that call into question whether Freeze understands what being the head coach in the Loveliest Village on the Plains entails.