Auburn fires Hugh Freeze in his third season after embarrassing home loss to Kentucky

November 2, 2025 – AUBURN, AL – Auburn Athletics Director John Cohen finally ended Hugh Freeze's troubled tenure as Auburn's head football Coach before the completion of his third season. The decision became unavoidable after a horrid offensive performance Saturday night in Auburn to Kentucky (another bad team).

Auburn's defense was great and held Kentucky to just 10 points; but that was more than enough points to trounce Auburn. Auburn's only scoring drive resulted in a field goal and that was set up by an interception by the defense.

"I have informed Coach Freeze of my decision to make a change in leadership with the Auburn Football program," Cohen said in a statement. "Coach Freeze is a man of integrity, and we are appreciative of his investment in Auburn and his relentless work over the last three years in bolstering our roster. Our expectations for Auburn Football are to annually compete for championships, and the search for the next leader of Auburn Football begins immediately."

Cohen talked about "annually competing for championships." At this point annually having a winning season and going to a bowl game would be a welcome improvement. Auburn has not won more than six games since 2019 and last went to a bowl game in 2023 when Freeze took a 6 and 6 Tigers team to Nashville for the Music City Bowl where Auburn lost 31 to 13 to the Maryland Terrapins

Freeze pleaded for "patience" in the postgame press conference. Auburn wasn't hearing that. Freeze leaves Auburn with a 15 and 19 record and a 6 and 16 record in the SEC. The highlight of the Freeze era at Auburn was a win over Texas A&M in 2024 – Auburn's only win over a ranked opponent in the Freeze era. On the negative side the most memorable moment was a 2023 home loss to New Mexico State that launched the Diego Pavia (QB) experience in the SEC. He came back and beat Auburn as the Vanderbilt quarterback in 2024. Auburn's next game is against Vanderbilt and Diego (who successfully sued the NCAA to get more eligibility).

Former Maryland Coach D.J. Durkin was named the interim head coach.

Auburn owes Freeze a $15.4 buyout that will be paid $406,000 a month through January 2029.

Auburn inexplicably fired Gus Malzahn after the 2020 season, then fired Brian Harsin in his second year on the plains. Hugh came three games from finishing his third season.

Auburn has paid/owes its last three head coaches $52 million in buyout money.

Hugh Freeze refused to abandon his gimmicky high school offense that is built around the run pass option. Could things have gone better if Hugh Freeze the coach had fired Hugh Freeze the washed up offensive coordinator and brought in a legitimate SEC play caller and let him run the offense? We will never know because in three years on the Plains Freeze never did that.

The Freeze era at Auburn was characterized by just horrid offensive line play and questionable decisions at quarterback.

The best of the Freeze quarterbacks was probably Payton Thorne (a transfer from Michigan State); but Jackson Arnold, Robby Ashford, Ashton Daniels, Hank Brown, and Holden Geriner all got significant action at different points in the Freeze experiment and the offense never worked. Freeze also failed to develop a quarterback. Both Walker White and Deuce Knight (even though Auburn is paying Knight $1.2 million) appear to be busts.

Auburn currently has the 14th scoring offense in the SEC.

With LSU, Florida, Arkansas, Penn State, UCLA, Virginia Tech, Oklahoma State, and Stanford all already having coaching vacancies finding a head coach will not be challenging.

Auburn goes on the road to play Vanderbilt next. Then ends the season with two home games against Mercer and Alabama. Auburn is 4 and 5 on the season.

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