The Auburn Corner: Hugh Freeze is out of time. How much longer can he hold on?

(Auburn Athletics)

The Auburn Tigers face a familiar feeling this week, coming off another defeat, and trying to figure out how to fix things ahead of yet another game that feels like their head coach Hugh Freeze is coaching for his job.

Frankly, after the way the offense performed last week in another home game against the Missouri Tigers, during an overtime loss that left the unit looking as hopeless as ever, it was a surprise to many that Auburn didn’t already make the call to part ways with Hugh Freeze.

The latest defeat took Freeze’s record as the Tigers head coach to 14-18 overall 5-15 in the SEC, 9-10 at home in Jordan-Hare Stadium, and an absolutely pathetic 1-12 against ranked opponents.

While the recruiting has been world’s better than the previous administration and the level of talent is much higher on the roster, the results on Saturdays are worse.

Which is a massive red flag in itself that Bryan Harsin won more games with the dreadful rosters he put together than Freeze has with a talent level that allows Auburn to match up player for player with most teams in the conference.

Freeze — who is supposed to be an offensive specialist — has an offense which can’t score points, and his quarterback evaluation out of the transfer portal with Jackson Arnold appears to have once again been extremely flawed. At a certain point, enough is going to be enough. And that point has come and has been here for weeks now.

Freeze’s team does not find a way to win, it finds new ways to lose each and every week. That’s on coaching.

His teams have no resilience, and no ability to bounce back from bad breaks like officiating and poor plays. That’s on coaching.

Most importantly, his team shrinks in the biggest moments of games when reality should be the opposite. There’s no bigger sign of poor coaching than that.

For the last two years, Freeze has been able to sell a dream to fans and boosters that once the roster was better, they would start winning games. But the roster is better, and games aren’t being won.

Freeze has run out of time, and with most fans he’s run out of patience. With a road game against a dreadful defense at Arkansas this week, it feels once again like this is a must-win. But even if Auburn does go up to Fayetteville and leave with a victory, a decision should, and likely already has been made.

This is not the coach to bring the Tigers back to college football prominence. Auburn needs to go find the one who is.

Michael Brauner is a Senior Sports Analyst and Contributing Writer for Yellowhammer News. You can follow him on Twitter @MBraunerWNSP and hear him every weekday morning from 6 to 9 a.m. on “The Opening Kickoff” on WNSP-FM 105.5, available free online.