Rumor: Bo Nix, most of 2020 Auburn football roster wouldn't have transferred if Freeze was hired instead of Harsin

Bryan Harsin taking the Auburn football head coaching job in 2020 was transformational for the Tigers in many ways but none more so than how the roster shaped up following Gus Malzahn's departure.

According to 2021 third-round NFL draft pick from the Plains, Anthony Schwartz, Bo Nix would've never left following his junior year and most of Malzhan's roster wouldn't have left either if Hugh Freeze was hired instead.

"The 2020 roster would’ve almost all returned and Bo never gets chased out of the program if Freeze gets hired in 21," Schwartz wrote on Twitter.

The Pembroke Pines, Florida native essentially confirmed the narrative of a notable Auburn Twitter voice who laid out how the Harsin hiring was so detrimental to the health of the Tigers program over the long haul.

"If Auburn hired Hugh Freeze in 2021 instead of 2023 and we were in this exact situation, Auburn fans would not feel the same way they do now," the account prefaced before saying, "2 years of Bryan Harsin completely depleted Auburn’s roster and really took a toll on Auburn fans.

"A Top 5 recruiting class in year 2, after a top 10 class in year 1 breeds hope. To little fault of Hugh Freeze, this doesn’t feel like year 2. It feels like a 4 year rebuild."

Bryan Harsin isn't the reason Auburn football is losing in 2024

By all means, Tiger fans should be doing whatever mental gymnastics it takes to deflect the team's current failures on a past coach. The first amendment allows for such takes to exist without impunity. Harsin did irreparable damage and there's no overcomin that fact.

But actually thinking that, when 77 of the team's 85 scholarship recruits were hand-picked by Freeze and in an era TCU went from 5-7 in 2021 to a College Football Playoff Championship appearance in 2022/23, is a choice. Probably a good one to stay sane in the present, but not an honest one.

Freeze's recruits are not responding the right way to the coaches Freeze hired. If the current head coach can own that fact and course-correct, the Tigers will be in good shape.

But if the fanbase still wants to blame Harsin? Well, no one says you can't, but most of the country won't take it seriously in the year 2024. And the value of that take will depreciate every season from here on out.