Hugh Freeze, Payton Thorne Continue Blame Game during Auburn's Bye Week

While they've struggled on the field, Hugh Freeze and the Auburn Tigers are excelling at the Blame Game.

Auburn Tigers head coach has worn out every coach's favorite buzzword when things are going poorly - execution. / Jake Crandall/ Advertiser / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

Drawing a line under the 4th-down flashpoint during Auburn's loss at Georgia has shown no signs of letting up during the Tigers' bye week.

Quite often the bye week can leave fans going hungry for juicy-tid-bits and gossip, but that's certainly not been the case over the last few days.

Head coach Hugh Freeze has done his best to carry the burden of responsibility for his teams repeated failures after initially chucking his quarterback under the bus. However, quarterback Payton Thorne's botched play at Georgia is only a microcosm of far greater issues being at play. 

You would have to suggest that it's really the only course of action the increasingly under-fire Tigers boss could realistically take, but it comes with a caveat that he feels he's still calling the right plays. He's mastered the art of talking out of both sides of his mouth when diagnosing Auburn's struggles -- in essence saying "It's my fault the players don't execute the plays I call."

Wait. What?

"We can talk about how young we are and all that, but we're six games in and it's our job to make sure our kids are consistent in whatever the execution of the calls are. It just shows up over and over again on tape," Freeze said this week on the SEC Coaches Teleconference. "We can talk about explosive plays we give up or first down production on offense or defense and all of those, but ultimately I think it comes down to us being able to execute the given calls.

"Sometimes the other teams win because they have good athletes and good coaches also. But when you look at it - and we feel the failure is because we're not executing enough calls properly - then we've got to correct that somehow." 

While it's all very true that this youthful Tigers team should be framed more as a longer-term development process, the brutal fact is, Freeze is now two years into delivering lackluster results. Simply expecting his team, and principally Thorne, to successfully carry out his game plan has been a huge coaching overestimation, which Freeze simply must own.

Consequently, the further wins in recruitment, should have been the cherry on the top of the cake, especially if the Tigers were playing winning football. but now they're being used to paper over the cracks.

Dusting themselves off and making some badly needed adjustments is perfectly ok in theory, particularly because they now have some time to go back through things. In practice however, the massively fractured relationship between Freeze and Thorne is playing havoc within a program that always badly needed a shared direction.

Of course, Thorne has handled the situation well, but as he edges toward leaving the program - you might speculate at what point does the dam burst on his pent up frustrations?

For now Thorne, is dutifully taking his share of the blame in an attempt to iron out problems moving forward. 

"So, it's a group effort," Thorne explained during an appearance on The Next Round. "It starts with the quarterback, obviously when I touch the ball every single play, for the most part. I have that responsibility to take care of the ball. But just kind of trying to play sound football. Turnovers is obviously a big part of that, and there's a lot of other things that play into winning football too. Complimentary football, field position, red zone efficiency, third down efficiency. There's a ton of things that goes into those things and turnovers is maybe the most important one of these."

If nothing else, at least the 2024 Auburn Tigers are pretty darn good at playing the blame game.