Auburn head coach Bryan Harsin speaks to the media during the 2021 SEC Football Kickoff Media Days on July 22,2021 at the Wynfrey Hotel,Hoover,Alabama. (Jimmie Mitchell/SEC)
Auburn will be looking for a new defensive coordinator after Ron Roberts leaves to join Florida.
Hugh Freeze will hire his second defensive coordinator during his tenure at Auburn, and some early candidates have emerged. Let us take a stab at three that make sense.
Chris Kiffin
Freeze and Kiffin have a strong history. He was on Freeze’s staff at Ole Miss and was an extremely effective defensive coach, both on the field and in recruiting. He currently coaches linebackers for the Houston Texans.
Yes, he is Lane Kiffin’s brother.
Charles Kelly
Despite the lack of an official announcement, Kelly is already on Freeze’s staff and working within the program, according to multiple sources. Kelly could be named a defensive backs coach or a co-DC to allow him to flex his recruiting muscle, but he would be more appropriate as defensive coordinator after serving as the DC at Colorado last season.
Zach Arnett
When Freeze was looking for a defensive coordinator a year ago, the former Mississippi State head coach’s name came up. This time around, his name has also generated some buzz. According to Auburn Undercover, he will most likely be one of the few names considered.
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Auburn’s Hugh Freeze will take over play calling…….
The play call sheet will return to Auburn head coach Hugh Freeze in 2024, according to ESPN’s Chris Low on Tuesday morning.
Matt Zenitz of 247Sports hinted at the same news on Friday, but said no decision had been made yet.
The announcement follows Freeze’s decision not to keep offensive coordinator Philip Montgomery, who served as the Tigers’ play caller in 2023. According to Low, Freeze “looked at a couple of different options” following Montgomery’s firing, but appears to have decided on calling plays himself.
Freeze was the offensive play-caller for his previous head coaching stops at Arkansas State, Ole Miss, and Liberty. When Freeze arrived at Auburn, however, he chose to delegate those responsibilities to Montgomery.
“I hired Philip to call plays,” Freeze explained at SEC Media Days on July 18. “Now, I’ve done this for years. I believe I was once considered one of the best play callers in the country. I haven’t felt completely on top of my game, but I can still manage a game and find a way to win.”
Instead, Freeze chose to step back from offensive play and become more involved in the Tigers’ recruiting efforts.
That decision proved to be a trade-off, as Auburn now has the seventh-ranked recruiting class in the country, according to 247Sports, but was near the bottom of the barrel in a number of offensive categories by the end of the 2023 season.
With Montgomery at the helm of Auburn’s offense in 2023, the Tigers finished 11th in the SEC in scoring offense and 121st in passing offense, leaving only nine FBS teams with a lower finish.
Throughout Auburn’s turbulent season on offense, Freeze made it clear that he wished he could be more involved in play-calling decisions.
“This is new to me,” Freeze said of not calling plays following Auburn’s disastrous performance at Texas A&M. “It’s difficult for me. “I confessed to everyone in the building.”
After Auburn’s loss to Ole Miss on Oct. 21, in which the Tigers’ offense used the same strange quarterback rotation it had all season with Payton Thorne and Robby Ashford, Freeze felt compelled to take over the reins.
“I went in after the Ole Miss game and I said, ‘This is it, this is what we’re doing,”” said Freeze. “‘And don’t anybody ask me anything else, because this is what we’re doing.'”
Following Tuesday morning’s news, it appears that there will be a lot more of it in the coming season.
Meanwhile, with Montgomery gone, Auburn still has an open position on its offensive staff.
It appears that Freeze may promote current Auburn staffer Kent Austin, who currently serves as special assistant to the head coach on the Tigers’ staff but has a long history of coaching quarterbacks, a responsibility previously held by Montgomery.
However, Freeze and the Tigers have yet to announce what they plan to do with the vacant position.
