By Brant Daughtry
One Last Gasp
Maryland is a weird team that I will admit to not having paid much attention to. They’re 7-5 overall, losing to good teams and beating the bad. They did pull out a close game against a half-decent Nebraska team earlier this year to become bowl eligible. It’s a bowl season though, which means both squads are in some flux as far as roster, which makes this a very tough game to preview.
The head coach of the Terps is Michael Locksley, who has been in the position since the 2019 season. The name should be familiar to Auburn fans, as Locksley spent a few years as the OC at Alabama, winning the Broyles Award as the top assistant coach in college football in 2018. He’s aggressive in the passing game, taking the “run for yards, throw for miles” approach. And with quarterback Taulia Tagovailoa, that’s been what they’ve done. But, like I said, there’s been movement on the Maryland roster.
Normally, I would preview a quarterback at this section. But, this is bowl season, and one of the casualties for Auburn’s upcoming opponent is Tagovailoa. He’s off to either a different school or to the NFL, and it’ll be up to Billy Edwards Jr. to step into the role. He’s much more of a running threat, coming in this season in short yardage situations for Maryland this year. Locksley has said that he sees this game as a preview of his upcoming quarterback battle. Edwards has a chance to really get out ahead for next season if he performs well in this game, so look for him to be playing his best. Cam Edge, a four-star redshirt freshman, is also expected to take reps.
Players to Watch For:
Wide Receivers Jeshaun Jones and Tai Felton, #’s 6 and 10- The quarterback may not be playing, but indications are that his favorite targets will be. Jones and Felton, a graduate student and a junior, both have over 700 receiving yards and have combined for 10 touchdowns. With all of the absences in Auburn’s secondary, these two will be a threat regardless of who’s under center for Maryland.
Safety Beau Brade, #2- Brade is going to the Senior Bowl soon, and he’ll be wanting to make a statement in his last game for the Terrapins. He’s the leading tackler for Maryland with 72 total on the season, and is pretty good in pass coverage as well with six breakups. With All-Big 10 corner Tarheeb Still sitting out this game, a lot of pressure will be on Brade to make up the difference.
I’ve always felt that one game should not condemn or save any player or coach. It requires a truly sober examination of an entire body of work to make a judgement on someone involved with football. When looking at the body of work for Hugh Freeze in year one, there are positives and negatives to take into account. First thing to note is recruiting. Auburn has not had a top ten class since before the 2020 season when it finished 9th with a class highlighted by Tank Bigsby, and Freeze is going to ring in at 7th in his first full season with room to go higher and hoping for a top-5 class next year. Freeze has always been an excellent recruiter, and he’s been able to adapt to the new landscape of NIL and transfer portaging in a way that I will admit is far better than I expected. You can lose games with good players, but you absolutely cannot win without them.
Also of note is the close games Auburn had against the two best teams on its schedule. Playing in front of incredible JHS crowds, Auburn managed to play in tight games with Georgia and Alabama, which most didn’t expect. Freeze is a master motivator, and in the biggest moments, Auburn pushed more talented teams to the brink and teetered on the edge of ruining their seasons. Moral victories are dumb, and at the end of the day it can’t be ignored that both games ended in losses, but the context of how much Auburn was behind in the arms race with both of those teams makes those close losses as inspiring as heartbreak can be. It can also be noted that Auburn played to a tight final score with a really good Ole Miss team, but anyone who watched that game will tell you why it wasn’t that close. More on that later.
The negatives though, can’t be ignored. Auburn did not beat a good team this year. Their two wins over teams with half-decent records were wins over FCS team Samford, who finished the season 6-5 and did not make the FCS playoffs, and Cal, who finished 6-7 with 34-14 loss to Texas Tech in the Independence Bowl. Auburn’s close losses are more inspiring than any of its wins. The conference wins came over teams that were dead or dying, not major players.
In several of their losses, especially during the early season four-game losing skid, the offense looked worse than bad. There was a lack of identity, a lack of direction, and most concerning, a lack of adjustment. Auburn continued to bang its head against an unyielding wall, throwing RPO fades and running inside zone into three-and-out after three-and-out. Auburn made adjustments eventually, but rather than take its shot at bigger players, Auburn went into a shell in certain games, waiting to face fledgling teams like Vanderbilt and Mississippi State to expand the playbook. Against Alabama, Auburn ran several concepts that it hadn’t all year, leading to a significantly improved offense, especially its running game. Winning against Alabama is important, but why wait until that game to open up what seems like half of your playbook? Auburn cannot keep that much of an offense under wraps until the 12th game of the year. It will lose way more games than it should if it keeps that up. What good is a win over Alabama if it comes after losses to lesser teams? If Auburn wants to play for championships, it needs to win every game, not just the Iron Bowl.
And lastly, the elephant in the room. The loss to New Mexico State is, quite possibly, the worst loss in Auburn football history. More troubling is that it continues a trend for Hugh Freeze-coached teams. Even in his days at Ole Miss, where he was known for occasionally playing spoiler, he would regularly lose to teams in which his group was favored by multiple possessions. Two years in a row now, it’s been New Mexico State to swing the axe. The phrase “talent gap” was thrown around a lot by Hugh Freeze and others this season, defending less than stellar performances. That’s fair. As I said above, you cannot win games without good players. The thing is, even with Auburn’s unimpressive roster, they were still significantly more talented than New Mexico State. I don’t think Auburn will lose another paycheck game, don’t hear in this that I expect Auburn to have anything quite that bad again. I do think I’m justified though, in saying I expect that Auburn will regularly lose at least one game that it shouldn’t, and it’s all too possible that will derail what should be a championship-caliber team.
I have admitted to not being a fan of Hugh Freeze. Anyone who’s listened to me on the radio or read my thoughts in these previews could probably tell you that. I do think that this section, which at this point makes up over half of this article, has been fair. In year one, we saw some good things, things that give hope for the future of Auburn football. We have also seen baffling things, things that make you scratch your head in confusion. For a season in which a team finished 6-6, I think that makes sense. What comes next is marked improvement. Auburn needs to be significantly better next year. If they are, then Auburn will enter 2025 with major expectations, hoping to compete for a championship, expectations that Freeze has set himself. The first part of showing that improvement probably won’t come against Maryland, Auburn has leaked a lot of offensive players to the portal, but it will be an opportunity to end the year with a winning record, and leave a good taste in the fanbases mouth going into next year.
