4 hours ago, bigbird said:

Apparently the only position that needs depth is LB... 

Luckily, LB is easily the best position group in this class for us.

7 hours ago, bigbird said:

Gonna be a good weekend

Can we expect any commits, since I'm not anticipating the "good" part to be on the field?

Opinions on Toppmeyer's article today (about us and Gus)? Not going to post it because I'll get slammed for it but obviously I hope he is proven wrong.

39 minutes ago, Hank2020 said:

That’s surprising to me, believe they have 8 wins at this point.

Funny enough, they also have a G5 blowout loss (6-5 South Alabama).

2 minutes ago, woodford said:

If we win the IB then Music City is probably a lock. If we lose then we’re headed to Memphis. 

Just so long as one of FSU or Clemson wins, we should avoid B'ham.

3 hours ago, aubiefifty said:

What are Auburn’s bowl projections after New Mexico State loss

Published: Nov. 20, 2023, 2:36 p.m.

2–3 minutes

---

 

Auburn football coach Hugh Freeze previews Iron Bowl

Following its 31-10 upset loss to New Mexico State, Auburn’s bowl projections have taken a shift.

Many now have Auburn spending the days right after Christmas in Houston.

Auburn possibly played itself out of a Gator Bowl spot by losing to New Mexico State. While the Texas Bowl does make some sense for Auburn, a Texas A&M team likely to finish 7-5 also would be a fit given proximity to Houston.

Most projections suggest Auburn finishes the year 6-6 and closing the year with consecutive losses to New Mexico State and Alabama. Auburn plays Alabama at 2:30 Saturday at Jordan-Hare Stadium.

Here’s a look at where some major websites think Auburn will end up.

The Action Network: Auburn vs Oklahoma State in Texas Bowl.

CBS Sports: Auburn vs Kansas State in the Texas Bowl

USA Today: Auburn vs Iowa State in Liberty Bowl

ESPN: Both Mark Schlabach and Kyle Bonagura project Auburn to the Music City Bowl. Schlabach picks Auburn against Northwestern, Bonagura against Wisconsin.

247Sports: Auburn vs Oklahoma State in the Texas Bowl

Athlon Sports: Auburn vs Wisconsin in the Music City Bowl

The Sporting News: Auburn vs Oklahoma in the Texas Bowl.

The Texas Bowl is scheduled for 8 p.m. on Dec 27.

The Music City Bowl is scheduled for 1 p.m. on Dec. 30.

The Liberty Bowl is scheduled for 3:30 p.m. on Dec. 29.

Matt Cohen covers Auburn sports for AL.com. You can follow him on X at @Matt_Cohen_ or email him at mcohen@al.com

There's absolutely no way we get matched up with a 10-2 Oklahoma team. I agree with Schlabach and Bonagura here.

40 minutes ago, bigbird said:

TAMU may try to do all it can to keep him for their new coach. 

As of now, I feel good. 

I know they just spent a ton but their boosters are so unfathomably rich that IDK how we could beat any offer they make. And they're fully capable of attracting the type of coach that could make him stay.

We need one more *BIG* fish in recruiting after what happened Saturday. Cam is the type of player that if we get the NMSU loss truly will look more like the UAT-ULM '07 game.

The real thing I’m cautious about is what happens when A&M gets its new coach in.

1 hour ago, SumterAubie said:

I hope he doesn't do a somersault back to Florida, after yesterday's sh!tshow

Of course, Florida lost to a team we blew out.

1 minute ago, ellitor said:

They've never been out of it. Regardless, iff CC still visits this week & for the IB I still like where we sit.

Well, my goal is what it has been up to this point: consensus top 15 finish.

10 minutes ago, bigbird said:

I'm kinda hoping so. 🤣

So...are you saying it as Cruiser interpreted?

4 minutes ago, Old fan 47 said:

And that is apparently the AU way. Hire an inferior coach, give him 2 or 3 years to underperform and buy him out for a large amount! When will this cycle end? AU football is so much less enjoyable than AU Basketball, baseball, softball, gymnastics and hell, even swimming. Now a bottom tier SEC team. 

Those other sports are in far more favorable circumstances.

3 minutes ago, Bro Johnny Mac said:

I  think CHF’s buyout is pretty affordable compared to other HC contracts.. 

I could be wrong 

My Hope is that we will have a couple of great recruiting/portal cycles and we have an 8 win season next season and firings and buyouts won’t even be a discussion 

Yeah. I'm mainly sick of this idea that we could so easily become what UAT/UGA and the only thing standing in our way is Rane. 🙄

Not that it will make anyone feel better, nor should it, but if one of Clemson or FSU wins next week we should still make a "Group of Six" bowl.

4 minutes ago, Bro Johnny Mac said:

The reality is that this year is a Mulligan for CHF..

If it’s this bad next season,he will be gone unless the next two recruiting cycles are top 5 to top 10 ... Then he may get another season 

I know Gus is finally off the payroll after next year but we absolutely cannot afford to give him less than four years (correct me if I'm wrong, but Potato Man is off the payroll after 2026, and Freeze's contract doesn't run much past that).

Big reason we hired so many Liberty coaches was because we couldn't afford anything different after those awful buyouts.

35 minutes ago, tigeraddikt said:

I feel like 2018 was a suck year as well, the first year post-Braden Smith where the OLine truly fell apart. Stidham got engaged and came back not knowing how to play football. Only bright spot was the meaningless Purdue bloodbath in the bowl game.

Fair. But if we can reach a point where we're at least 8 wins, 9 wins half hte time and make quarterfinals once every four years, I'd take it.

EDIT: You can laugh, but when you look at how many times each SEC team not named Alabama or Georgia would have made the 12-team playoffs, I don't necessarily think I'm lowballing it.

51 minutes ago, Butthead said:

I remember not being able to sleep the entire night after the FSU natty loss. But the next day I thought, damn we have been in 2 title games in 3 years. The future is bright. Hard to believe that after that night we have pretty much sucked for a whole fricking decade. 

I would argue that 2015 aside we've only truly sucked since hte pandemic. If Hugh can get us to a 2016-19 level and keep us there (mind you I'm def less confident of that than I was yesterday), we're hunky dory.

The level Gus had us at may just be the best we can realistically hope for. Now, it was obvious that we were not going to be able to keep at that level anymore under him, but I would say that 2016-19 level (which would mean a berth in the playoff every few years) is a reasonable goal to shoot for under Hugh.

20 minutes ago, LPTiger said:

So while ya'll were watching this game I was celebrating the life of a larger than life cousin who graduated from AU in '79 with a BS in Forestry.  It was in Monroeville, AL and the fried chicken from the Pig in Monroeville is something to behold.  There was plenty of it available to all after the memorial.   If Steve had not died his way earlier in the week, one of either this game or some of the comments on this board would have surely killed him in a worse way.

Maybe it is because I didn't get to watch it, I don't know.   But, some of the reactions here are like we just lost to a middle cchool coached by Sister Teresa --- by a hundred.   Obviously, nothing good happened today, and I know we were like a 75 point favorite, but New Mexico State didn't look at the odds and they have somehow won 9 ball games.   We should never lose to New Mexico State anytime anywhere, but it just happened. Now, because of that loss, Hugh Freeze is a fraud.  He is a mediocre coach and should have never been hired in the first place.   Indeed, we should have just kept Gus Malzhan.   Come on folks.   This is a terribly flawed football program r/n.   Our best wide receiver is 5'6".   We haven't had a 100 yard receiver in 11 games.   We don't have a legit pass rusher.  We have 40% of our OL playing pretty good and the other 60%, well when they aren't getting flagged, they are getting beat.   This is where we are TODAY.

And, we aren't coaching well.   But, better players make for better coaching.  Here is an example.  3rd and goal from the 17, we call a blitz and man up the receivers (instead of not blitzing and trying to keep everything 17 yards in front of the goal line).   Larry Nixon is the only non-db not blitzing.  Instead, he fakes the blitz for 2 steps and then drops into coverage.   But, herein lies the player problem.    Nixon HAS to cover the back out of the backfield.   The back lines up to the QB's left near the left hash.   Guess where Larry limes up and fakes his blitz from -- the opposite hash.   The back releases, and he is wide open because Larry is 10 yards to the back's right.   As much as I hate the blitz call (I assume we were trying to push them out of field goal range) all 4 of the Db's had really good coverage on the play but Nixon had zero chance because of where he lined up.   If he lines up on the hash that the back is near, there is no TD.   I feel pretty confident Larry wasn't coached to line up as far away as possible from the back you need to cover. 

@Didba has made a post about us averaging nearly 8 yards per pass play in this game and under 3 per rush.  Yet, we rushed it 9 more times than we threw it (and we only had 45 snaps I think).   The OC has to have better in game awareness.   This was a big problem during the 4 game losing streak.   It got much better during the 3 game win streak.  In any event it is unacceptable.   I strongly suspect a change will be made here heading into next year. 

At the end of the day, this was a horrible game in a year that we all knew was going to be horrible.   We weren't 38 points better than Arkansas anymore than we were just 7 points worse than UGA.    This is a rebuild project.  It will not be easy or fast.       

Technically speaking we did meet the win total I realistically hoped for. What I and I think everyone is more looking at, is can improve next year (as in, just one more win)?

Cristobal did have a similar loss in his first year at Miami and while still not having a great year in his second, they *have* improved and seem to be trending in the right direction.

Just now, TitanTiger said:

The route trees aren't simple.  We just don't have any studs at that position whatsoever.  It's one of the reasons the incoming WR class is so amazing looking (and may get even better soon) - they don't see anyone on this WR depth chart that they don't think they can take their job next year as a freshman.

Can we keep our class intact though?

11 minutes ago, passthebiscuits said:

May I suggest that if the players aren’t talented or developed enough and certainly not motivated at this point in the season, that it lies squarely in the coaching realm?

Yeah, after your optimism about CHF, I just don't know who the answer could be if he's not it.

2 minutes ago, murpjf88 said:

If this loss doesn't make you jump off a cliff, how about Liberty going from 8-4 in CHF's last season to 11-0 and ranked? Oh, and yeah, they beat New Mexico State soundly. 

I don't want to excuse the performance today but it could indicate that Freeze left a good situation. 🤷‍♂️

2 minutes ago, au701948 said:

We may not get a bowl invitation after the effort from this game.

Even I'm not that negative lol.

But it's incredibly hard to fathom...before this game literally everything was pointing in the right direction for the program.

3 minutes ago, aucom96 said:

I would be surprised if anyone other than Freeze was seriously considered. We have boosters that think they know football making the decisions. No one outside of Auburn wanted Hugh Freeze. There were a number of coaches out there we could have thoughtfully pursued. Some were up and comers with no guarantees. Some were young P5 coaches with promising starts. We talk to them, but just like with Gus, the pick was made before the talks even began. We act like we're a conference USA team when we hire coaches and we get those kind of results. We have a big time football resume, but we have a small ball mentality from the top down. 

We've got Freeze. We'll hope for the best. But we can simultaneously stop acting like this guy is some top level coach and that we are incapable of attracting good coaches to this program. If we need to have booster leverage over every  coach we hire, sure. Freeze is probably top value... but we overpaid. 

EVERY program has boosters that want influence in exchange for their support.  

3 minutes ago, Carnell said:

Really why don't  you go look at the list of canadiates that A&M is looking at as compared to our last 2 hires.

They are simply a far more attractive job than us at this point, for reasons out of our control. I do feel like we were way too hard on Gus--keeping a program smack in the middle of the two best programs in the country afloat is a bear of a task.