Paul Finebaum Not Impressed by Auburn Recruiting, Hugh Freeze 'Clearly on Hot Seat'

As Hugh Freeze enters his third year in charge of the Auburn Tigers, lofty recruiting rankings won't be enough for him to see year four.

Auburn Tigers head coach has upgraded the roster on the Plains, now the wins must follow. / Dale Zanine-Imagn Images

When Paul Finebaum muses over the turbulent tenure of Auburn Tigers head coach Hugh Freeze, the veteran analyst nearly always goes into full-on cobra attack mode.

More recently Finebaum has seemed almost bored with attacking the embattled Freeze, but after his second loss in the Iron Bowl blood is in the water once again.

"With Auburn, [I] kind of came away with an empty feeling. Really have to wonder about this program's future," Finebaum said on the McElroy and Cubelic in the Morning Show. "Recruiting is one thing, and I know the hype machine is going crazy there.

"But in two or three weeks we'll have a better look at the portal and recruiting [landscape] and try to figure out what Hugh Freeze needs to do next year to save his job. Because he's clearly on the hot seat."

In truth, Finebaum is only spitting forth the same kind of venom which a great number of downtrodden Tigers fans are already saying on campus when it comes to the polarizing Freeze.

Playing winning football tends to become the most pressing concern of even the section of fans who are well aware of how shrewdly Freeze has operated on the recruiting trail.

Having instantaneously doubled down on his rebuilding process just after the deflating, but also entirely predictable 28-14 loss to Bama, the Tigers boss has heaped a lot of extra pressure on his well honed recruiting skills.

Freeze delivered another top-10 recruiting class, but the transfer portal will also need to deliver a quarterback capable of playing right away, like USC's Miller Moss or Oklahoma's Jackson Arnold.

Everything might cool down significantly now that 5-star QB recruit Deuce Knight has signed with the Tigers, so the Auburn super powers might well take a much broader overview.

That will almost certainly involve planning further ahead and building a new look team for next season with some gusto, but the vision Freeze presents will have to be clear and unpolluted by the mounting losses on the field.

When Freeze finally does have to sit down and face the music in front of the principle decision makers who write the checks; it will be his most sincere hope that he's doing so from a position of relative strength, which Knight's arrival probably won't provide in 2025.

On account of his second straight season of orchestrating some disjointed-losing football, the grace period is over. The results need to follow the recruiting prowess in year three.

Therefore, Finebaum's assertion that a hot seat in waiting for coach Freeze seems just about right. Recruiting rankings won't save Freeze from a third-consecutive-losing season.