Hugh Freeze is revitalizing Auburn football recruiting
The typical Auburn fan has become used to something, that something would be a subpar on-field performance. Auburn has not had a winning season since the 2020 season, and yet despite this winning season, long-time Head Coach Gus Malzhan was fired. Malzhans successor, Bryan Harsin, tried to create an image of hard work and perseverance. The team might have worked hard but the onfield product led to consecutive losing seasons and ultimately the firing of Harsin and the hiring of Freeze.
The key to a winning program is recruiting high-level players, who can make an impact on the team. In a case such as this, Auburn needs an immediate resurgence in recruiting to get back to a contending spot in the SEC. Hugh Freeze knows this most of all as he helped to make Ole Miss, a school that had won a total of six wins in two years before Freeze took the helm, a national name and led them to three top-five finishes in the National Recruiting rankings according to 247 Sports.
Freeze's knowledge and proven capability are needed as during the past five years Auburn has only finished in the top 10 of these rankings once, which was the 2020 class that included future NFL pick, Tank Bigsby.
The 2024 class currently ranks as the 22nd class so far according to 247. The class has four members, all of which are four stars. Walker White, the Arkansas QB who is ranked as the ninth quarterback of the 2024 class, J'Marion "Phat" Burnette, the Andalusia RB who is the tenth-best back in the nation and a top ten in-state prospect, and a pair of in-state DBs in A'mon Lane and Jayden Lewis.
As of March 29th, this class is higher than every class since 2020 when Kobe Hudson, Avery Jernigan, Jay Hardy, and JJ Evans were all members of the class by March. The worst part of this is that every player besides Jernigan has transferred to a different team.
The average of those players mentioned was 92.85 making them middle-tier level four-star recruits. That class ended up with an average of 90.92 which was good for the fifth-best class in the SEC for that recruiting period. The current class average is 92.04, which would put us on pace for the highest class average since the mid-2000s.
Freeze has the experience and the knowledge of recruiting in an SEC landscape to take Auburn to heights that have not been seen since the years of Tuberville, Chizik, and the early years of Malzahn. Hugh hopes to be able to take them to where only a generational quarterback in Cam Newton was able to take them, the National Championship.
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