Hugh Freeze hot seat: Auburn loss to Missouri 'kind of sealed' HC's fate

More than halfway through his third season at Auburn, Hugh Freeze is still searching for his first SEC win. The Tigers lost 23-17 against Missouri in overtime on Saturday, marking their fourth straight defeat as they fell below the .500 mark on the season.

That’s led to some hot seat talk leading into Week 9 as Auburn gets ready to face Arkansas. But even if Freeze manages to win that game, college football analyst Josh Pate thinks his fate has already been sealed.

“I believe Auburn’s gonna end up moving on from Hugh Freeze,” he said on Josh Pate’s College Football Show on Sunday. “They lost to Missouri in overtime last night. …I question a couple of things here specifically. I question what Hugh Freeze is questioning. Because I keep listening to it and I keep giving him every benefit of the doubt.

“…Hugh Freeze keeps questioning the mentality of his team and questioning the toughness and questioning the quarterback and the decision-making and it sounds like a guy who just inherited a team and he’s in Year 1. I’m listening to it and I’m thinking, ‘Don’t you control all this?’ The mentality of the team? It’s your team. It’s your organization. Does the attitude of the team and the mentality of the team and the roster not, in an ideal world, reflect that of its head coach?”

Freeze took over the program in 2023 after Auburn fired Bryan Harsin only eight games into the second season of his tenure. A former coach at Ole Miss who twice beat Nick Saban and Alabama, there was optimism among Tigers fans that he was the right man to turn things around.

They were willing to give hi some patience after a 6-7 finish in his inaugural season, and even after he went 5-7 the following year. But if he continues to lose this year, it may be time to accept that it was the wrong hire.

Pate is sympathetic to the fact that Freeze had a massive rebuild job in front of him when he took over. At the same time, he believes the decisions Freeze made through the transfer portal and his roster building is part of the reason why Auburn is still where it is.

“You inherited a mess from Bryan Harsin,” he said. “You had reason to say that in Year 1 or Year 2. This is Year 3. …You watch Jackson Arnold play now and you listen to what Hugh Freeze says on the record. You get the behind-the-scenes stuff and they’re so unhappy with it. I’m like, ‘You picked him.’ You went and got him because you hadn’t developed one of your own in-house. And don’t be telling me there was no one available. (Syracuse coach) Fran Brown went and got (Steve) Angeli and (Fernando) Mendoza landed at Indiana. Auburn coulda had those kids. They chose Jackson Arnold. They chose wrong.

“You got a mentally weak team — those are paraphrased words. Hugh Freeze hasn’t outright said that, but he’s questioned several different aspects that make me say, ‘If you can’t solve those, if you’re Hugh Freeze, multi-year head coach at Auburn, and the mentality of your team sucks and they’re mentally weak and they can’t finish games, they can’t find ways to win and the quarterback position’s a disaster,— if you can’t solve that stuff what are you my head coach for?’ I think a lot of Auburn fans feel that way and they should feel that way.”

Auburn has come close at times this season. All of its losses have come by 10 points or fewer, and of course there was an officiating debacle in its loss to Georgia that left many fans and Freeze upset.

Perhaps those close calls against ranked opponents can be enough to buy Freeze some more time. If he doesn’t win against Arkansas on Saturday, though, Pate believes a move could be made right away.

“I, more than anyone, was willing to grant him a grace period,” he said. “I used this microphone several times to say, ‘You need to respect the rebuild they got on their hands down there. This is not Kalen DeBoer inheriting Alabama. This is the antithesis of that.’ I’ve had other coaches tell me, ‘That job Hugh’s got to do at Auburn, that’s gonna take a couple of years.’ I fully respected that. It’s Year 3 and it’s not working.

“…I’ve got places down deep here where I still believe Hugh can get it done, but it doesn’t matter what I believe. It matters what’s happening. The results are what matter and I’m not sure they’re done losing this year. …They go to Arkansas this Saturday and I’m a believer that what happened (against Missouri) kind of sealed Hugh Freeze’s fate, but we didn’t see any action today. If it goes south at Arkansas, I would expect action immediately. That’s the intel I’ve gotten.