Auburn Tigers head football coach Hugh Freeze has a reputation on the Plains for being a recruiting wizard. In the context of having followed up Bryan Harsin running the program (into the ground), that reputation makes sense.
Harsin didn’t bother to meet local high school coaches in Alabama and certainly didn’t do the work in the rest of the region. One of his final acts as head coach was recruiting JUCO transfers in Kansas. That is a nice way to complement a two-deep, but you need elite prospects across the depth chart to compete in the SEC.AU has completely fallen off as an NFL factory. It’s been a sad development that’s defined the NIL era of Auburn Tigers football.
Freeze has helped turn the narrative around, but as Evans notes, it may take time for that to come to fruition.
While he helped turn Eugene Asante from a scout team body into an NFL talent, Jarquez Hunter is a perfect example of a player who didn’t greatly improve under Freeze. Hunter was challenging Tank Bigsby for the RB1 role in 2021 and 2022 before being called out and thrown under the bus by Freeze, particularly in 2024.
Freeze has the 2025 season guaranteed and potentially 2026 too, but if the 2027 draft doesn’t feature multiple ex-blue-chips he brought to the Plains, his attempt to restore AU’s name to glory will have a definitive stopping point.Harsin didn’t land those, or even try to. Freeze has been because he’s been working overtime.
The crucial element Freeze is missing, though, is developing those elite recruits into early-round NFL draft picks.
Bama Hammer’s Ronald Evans believes that eliminates the concept of Freeze being a recruiting wizard from reality.
“Auburn players with expectations of becoming an NFL first-rounder are either oblivious to or unconcerned about Auburn’s poor track record for developing NFL players. Some might say that makes the players delusional. Apparently Auburn’s 2024 and 2025 roster additions buy into the tired theme of Hugh Freeze being a college football wizard,” Evans wrote.
“Auburn fans can defend their program by saying everything has changed in Alabama’s post-Saban era. It will take at least a couple more Drafts to prove that claim. So far, Kalen DeBoer is a better developer of first-round NFL players than Hugh Freeze. DeBoer’s coaching career includes only five FBS seasons. From Washington and Alabama, DeBoer has had five NFL first-rounders. Hugh Freeze has been an FBS head coach for 12 seasons. His career count of NFL first-rounders is four. All were Ole Miss players. Five NFL first-rounders after five seasons dwarfs Freeze with four after 12 seasons
