If the 2025 Auburn football season continues the way it is trending so far, fans may look back at the Texas A&M game as the turning point for head coach Hugh Freeze on the Plains.
It was not a great weekend to be an Auburn Tiger. While the defense played their hearts out and kept Auburn in the game against the Aggies, the offense barely had a pulse. After a frustrating loss to Oklahoma last weekend, fans were at least optimistic about the Tigers' performance and their ability to compete against good teams.
But somehow, the offense regressed between games four and five. The offense failed to convert on a single third down, quarterback Jackson Arnold was hesitant to throw the ball and completed only 18 of his 33 pass attempts, and the Tigers totaled only 52 rushing yards in the entire game.
In a program that was built on the run game, the running backs had only eight carries in the game compared to Arnold's 15 run attempts.
"It’s about sticking together through these difficult losses. We’re so close. We’re not far off," Freeze said in his postgame press conference.
But how close are we really? Freeze also said last week that he should have run the ball more, yet he refused to do it in this game. Freeze is praised for his prowess as an offensive-minded coach and a quarterback developer, yet those two things have been Auburn's biggest problems for the past three years.
At this point, Freeze has the talent. Two top-ten recruiting classes and top transfers have made Auburn football extremely capable, but talent doesn't matter when you can't even master the fundamentals of the game. The blockers on the offensive line looked lost, and they continue to show their lack of discipline through penalties and mistakes.
The Tigers have two weeks to prepare to host Georgia, and Freeze said they would be re-evaluating everything on the offense, and he blamed himself and his staff for the dreadful game on Saturday. If the Tigers don't have a strong showing against Georgia, what will the next excuse be?