Audio By Carbonatix
Hugh Freeze played Diego Pavia three times in three years and lost all three games by an average margin of 17 points. To make Auburn’s loss to Vanderbilt on Saturday even worse, he called the dumbest timeout of the entire 2024 college football season.
It is officially time to hit the panic button on The Plains!
Freeze, 55, was hired by the Tigers in November of 2022 and went 6-7 during his first year at the helm. He will need to lead an impressive late-season turnaround to meet that same mark in year two.
Auburn dropped to 3-6 with its first-ever home loss to Vandy. Never before had the latter won a game at Jordan-Hare Stadium prior to this weekend. Their quarterback is to thank!
Pavia’s stats (which were actually pretty rough) won’t jump out off of the page, but he willed the Commodores to victory. They couldn’t have done it without him.
In fact, this is Pavia’s third-straight win over Freeze in three-straight years— all on the road.
Tempers flare as Diego Pavia and Vanderbilt celebrate the win at Auburn. Pavia is now 3-0 vs. Hugh Freeze. pic.twitter.com/2aj6K31my5
— The Next Round (@NextRoundLive) November 2, 2024
He beat Liberty 49-14 in 2022 as the starting quarterback at New Mexico State. He also beat Auburn 31-10 with NMSU in 2023. Diego Pavia transferred to Vanderbilt during the offseason and won 17-7 on Saturday.
Hugh Freeze’s seat is heating up!
Although it is unlikely that the boosters will rush another head coach out of town, it’s not impossible. They could absolutely decide to fire Freeze if he does not make a bowl game. Probably not, but maybe!
Either way, Auburn’s third head coach in five years needs to start winning if he is going to last more than three years.
Not only did the Tigers lose their fifth game of the season, Freeze continued to prove incompetent during the fourth quarter. He called the dumbest timeout of the year.
Vanderbilt had the ball, up 17-7, on 1st-and-10 with just over two minutes left in the game. Freeze called his first of three timeouts after a two-yard run on first down. He called his second after a one-yard run on second down.
Auburn had one timeout left with 2:02 on the clock. The Commodores ran for no gain on third down.
Freeze decided to call his third and final timeout with 2:01 remaining.
Had he not called the timeout, the clock still would’ve stopped before Vanderbilt had to punt because of the new two-minute warning timeout. There was absolutely zero reason to stop the clock with a timeout. In fact, to do so was actually detrimental to the Tigers. All they got back was one single second.
It was terrible clock management!
Maybe Hugh Freeze forgot about the two-minute warning timeout. Maybe his decision to stop the clock was poor strategy.
Either way, his decision to call Auburn’s third and final timeout with two minutes and one second remaining in the fourth quarter while losing by 10 points was the worst timeout of the entire year.