Hugh Freeze is safe from being fired as the Auburn Tigers' head football coach. For now. CBS Sports' Brandon Marcello claims that AU's 33-24 win over the Arkansas Razorbacks bought Freeze a week of goodwill.
Marcello lauded the locker room for banding together through a controversial season, that's clearly had a lame duck head coach not fully in charge of things behind the scenes.
"Yes, Freeze earned another week of job security. But there's still work to do after a promising 3-0 start was followed by a four-game skid. Credit Auburn's locker room for sticking together amid the heartbreaking losses and incredibly baffling officiating by SEC officials in losses to Oklahoma and Georgia, including a touchdown by the Sooners that the conference admitted later shouldn't have counted," Marcello wrote.
Does that verdict change after the LSU Tigers fired Brian Kelly on Saturday? Perhaps. Perhaps not.
Hugh Freeze may last at Auburn until 2026
The planets may be aligning for Freeze to stick around well beyond the Kentucky Wildcats this coming weekend.
Benching Jackson Arnold may be the recipe to unleash a talented and increasingly underrated Auburn receiving corps. When Freeze benched Payton Thorne last year, he didn't have anyone ready to immediately step in. This time, he had a veteran in Ashton Daniels who was able to lead the offense in inclement weather on short notice when he benched his QB1.
If the offense is fixed, two to three more wins should be expected, and running the table isn't off the table. And if Auburn's boosters saw the team as 5-1 when they were 3-3 because of crooked officiating during the Georgia Bulldogs and Oklahoma Sooners losses, then two more wins would be viewed as an eight-win season. Freeze isn't being fired for that.
The toughest stretch of the season is over with, and this roster has battle scars now. Sticking together as the SEC continues to break apart may be the way forward. The Eli Drinkwitz special, if you will. The Missouri Tigers gave Drinkwitz three bad years before the turnaround happened in earnest in year four.
AU may have no choice to but to do the same. Things changed when Kelly was let go at LSU.