ESPN's Paul Finebaum Blasts Auburn's Hugh Freeze: 'Unforgiveable, Inexcusable'

Paul Finebaum has made a living stirring the pot well before he was on ESPN, but in the case of Auburn Tigers head coach Hugh Freeze, is he wrong?

The Auburn Tigers have had trouble with the Georgia Bulldogs before Hugh Freeze arrived, but the gap should be closer in his 2nd year. / Joshua L. Jones / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

Not that long ago, notorious ESPN media viper Paul Finebaum actually went momentarily coy and praised Auburn Tigers head coach Hugh Freeze. 

That always felt like trying to catch more flies with honey, because Finebaum would be laying wait ready to pounce on Freeze at the earliest opportunity.

"The fact is I heard one Auburn friend of mine say, 'Hey, at least we covered the spread (vs Georgia).' It makes me think ‘was that Vanderbilt playing Georgia or was that Auburn?’ That's the new Auburn right now, and that’s what's sad," Finebaum told the McElroy and Cubelic in the Morning Show. "And I don't care what anyone thinks about the progress Hugh Freeze is making and how close they are and they're about to turn the corner and everything I hear from people who ges inside the weeds."

While Finebaum has made a career out of  getting under people’s skin, there's unquestionably a whole heap of truths spilling out from him.

"It's October 7, and Auburn has 4 losses," Finebaum declared. "That's simply unforgiveable and it's inexcusable. And that's knowing what we all know and knowing what this schedule looks like the rest of the way. I didn't take a whole lot away from this game other than it could have been a lot worse, and that's really more on Georgia than it is on Auburn... I'm really tired of everyone getting the blame at Auburn except the guy who's in charge of the program. It's not easy, but he's still two years in and plenty of coaches have turned things around in 2 years, especially with what's available."

There's no need to soft-soap things. Precisely nobody within the Tigers program can proclaim that things are going as planned, despite the wins in terms of recruitment.

Living up to the expectations of such a storied program has swallowed up a great many who have gone before, so coming even close to achieving such adventurous goals is often a poison chalice.

Finebaum is actually bang on target - if you dumb down the Tigers ambitions -  you only serve to kill them off rather slowly and painfully.

Plenty of soul searching will doubtless be done by Freeze and Co. during the bye week, but that's always the same when you head into the brief period of R+R riding a corrosive losing streak.

Most certainly, the notion that a quick fix at quarterback will help perform some kind of mock exorcism is way wide of the mark.

Brutal reality is inescapable for all involved; it's highly likely that it's going to be the embattled Payton Thorne the rest of the way. Well at least until backup Hank Brown is deemed to require another run out.

Consequently, Freeze will need to double down on his efforts to keep things at least civil with his increasingly shaky signal caller, but his explosive sideline outbursts are bound to have caused fractures he will do well to repair.

"I think he's been pretty solid the last few games," Freeze backtracked significantly on Monday. "He has good reasons for doing what he does, for sure."

All told, continuing to slap a band-aid on the Tigers wound will only incur more of Finebaum's acid-laced blows moving forward - put the bank on it.