Paul Finebaum addresses the hype for Auburn in 2023

For all the hype and interest around the SEC, some don’t yet know what to make of Auburn. Those on The Plains are pumped with Hugh Freeze at the helm but, for everyone else, the Tigers may only have so much of a high ceiling for the year in his first season back in that division.

Paul Finebaum joined ‘McElroy and Cubelic In The Morning’ on Wednesday to discuss the potential finish for the Tigers. While he did say that they face a bit of an uphill climb from a talent standpoint, there’s no reason to think that they couldn’t reach the seven or eight-win plateau for the first time in four years.

“I think eight (wins) is probably SEC Coach of the Year land for Hugh Freeze,” Finebaum said. “Seven would be considered a good season. I just think that it’s a talent deficit.”

Finebaum’s main point in that argument is that the toss-up games, especially in the SEC can go to anybody. Considering what happened even just last season, he has no reason to count out the Tigers yet with their team being led by their new head coach.

“I think a lot of times what you don’t know in the SEC is the 50-50 games. We obsess over that because you have so many of those,” said Finebaum. “Just go back to last year. I mean nobody could have seen Vanderbilt over Kentucky and Florida in consecutive weeks. That was impossible to predict.”

To be fair, Auburn is going to have an incredibly difficult time from the start of conference play to mid-October. They’ll play a four-game stretch in that time against a quartet of Preseason AP Top-25 teams in Texas A&M, Georgia, LSU, and Ole Miss. They’ll also obviously close the year with another in the Iron Bowl with Alabama coming to Jordan-Hare.

Still, there’s a path to seven wins or eight, especially if they manage to pull an upset. Assuming they open at 3-0, their ranked matchups sandwich in a doable enough four-game stretch. That run includes Mississippi State, at Vanderbilt, at Arkansas, and then New Mexico State.

Auburn needs to focus on bowl eligibility first before they start dreaming too big. Even so, Finebaum knows that almost everything is on the table for the Tigers this fall if for no other reason than their coin flips chances within the Southeastern Conference.