Hugh Freeze: 'I just wasn’t afforded the opportunity to... do anything else other than recruit. So, we hit it hard…. It’s hard to really say how much we closed the gap on the teams that you’re trying to catch, but I do believe that we improved ourselves.”
Yet in the three months since Harsin’s firing, Auburn’s coaching staff — first the interim staff under Cadillac Williams and then the new staff under Hugh Freeze — worked tirelessly to make up ground with the 2023 class and through the transfer portal. When the dust settled on National Signing Day last week, Auburn finished with the nation’s No. 17 signing class and a transfer haul that ranked fourth in the country.
During that final month of the regular season, Williams and Co. worked to hold the class together while also getting a couple of key additions. Auburn picked up commitments from four-star defensive lineman Darron Reed and three-star edge defender Brenton Williams. Reed, a top-200 recruit in the 2023 class, flipped from LSU the week of the Iron Bowl. Williams, a local prospect from Opelika, committed just hours before Freeze was hired as Auburn’s next coach on Nov. 28.
Those results started to show in the days leading up to the early signing period. On Dec. 11, Auburn flipped four-star cornerback Colton Hood from Michigan State and three-star offensive tackle Tyler Johnson from Texas Tech following their official visits to the Plains. Two days later, the staff flipped four-star center Connor Lew from Miami.
It required quite the sprint to the finish line to make the move 36 spots up in the rankings after Harsin’s firing. While that surge overlapped with the beginning of the first transfer window, the flurry of activity paled in comparison to the frenzied push from Freeze and his staff during that 45-day transfer window.
Auburn’s staff closely monitored the transfer portal and moved quickly when possible fits became available. The biggest area the Tigers wanted to address was the line of scrimmage, so they prioritized the offensive and defensive lines. “Some of those challenges were very daunting, truthfully,” Freeze said. “I don’t remember a time in my whole career where we felt like we had to sign nine offensive linemen. I mean, that’s unheard of to try to get to your 16 number. That’s a big challenge…. There was just no way around it. We had to get after it.”
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