[autotag]Hugh Freeze[/autotag] has brought much-needed excitement to the Auburn fan base since he was introduced as head coach last November. However, there is one assistant coach from the SEC that is not buying the hype.
In Athlon Sports’ College Football preview magazine, one SEC assistant coach (who remains anonymous) says that Auburn will definitely improve in several aspects, but feels that the current talent pool is not worthy of an SEC title hunt.
“It’s gonna be another weird year. They’re getting a boost from [Hugh] Freeze coming back in the league and just not being Bryan Harsin. For all of Freeze’s problems, he can manage an SEC culture a thousand times better than Hars. … They’re starting over, but it’s Auburn, so they have good running backs. After that, they’re pretty mediocre.
This assistant also provided a rather harsh criticism of Freeze and Auburn football as a whole.
“Freeze didn’t really bring in the all-star staff he promised. It’s weird, there’s a lot of his Liberty dudes, and then you have Ron Roberts and the old Tulsa head coach [Philip Montgomery]. He’s going to use the entire season as a recruiting platform like he did those first two years at Ole Miss because the offensive line and the receivers are bad and don’t know the system, but Auburn is going to expect him to operate on a faster timeline. They’re so far behind Bama and Georgia; it’s maybe the biggest gap in decades.”
Athlon Sports is also not ready to say that Auburn will improve drastically under Freeze in year one. According to its SEC outlook, Auburn is projected to finish dead last in the western division with a 6-6 record and is forecasted to go 2-6 in SEC play.
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