There's excitement for the 2025 college football season on the Plains, with many writing off Auburn's struggles last year on Payton Thorne falling short at the QB position too early and often and there being little help behind him.
The entire QB room is gone with Thorne out of eligibility, Hank Brown in Iowa, Walker White at Baylor, and Holden Geriner at Texas State.
Through all of his faults, Bryan Harsin never accomplished that during his head coaching tenure.
On SI's Terrance Biggs cut Hugh Freeze some slack for it, but delivered a warning to the Oxford, Mississippi native that the narrative isn't in his favor.
"Hugh Freeze isn't Bryan Harsin. He does not exude the misplaced overconfidence or propensity for driving off an entire position group. Yet, the tie that binds Auburn's current coach and its former is a concern," Biggs wrote.
"With every successive losing season, Auburn drifts farther away from status as a football power. In the same time period, Georgia rose from the ashes, casting a large shadow to the east of the campus. Meanwhile, the University of Alabama stands to the west.
"Hugh Freeze fully understands the Tigers place on the SEC Serengeti, yet he attempts to change it, hopefully learning the lessons of the recent past."
Freeze and Harsin are very different in one key area: work ethic.
The former believes in work, hard work. It was the only way the Tigers could have in the right direction after Harsin shirked basic responsibilities like introducing himself to local high school coaches.
The Auburn family will never get over Harsin wasting the first two recruiting cycles of the NIL era for the program.
Soon enough, they won't get over Freeze's failures if they keep resembling Harsin's from a few short years ago.