For Auburn football, the youth movement is already underway

The Tigers leaned more on their kids in Week 5 than they had all year. Here's more on that and what Hugh Freeze said to open UGA week.

WR Malcolm Simmons (Zach Bland/Auburn Tigers)

AUBURN — For Hugh Freeze, it’s impossible not to look at the big picture right now.

That’s because the small picture, the recent record, is filled with nothing but frustration. Auburn exited a stretch of five straight games as home favorites — yes, even the Oklahoma matchup — with a 2-3 record and an 0-3 mark against power-conference opponents.

The three losses came by a combined 23 points, which hurts even more when you consider that the Tigers had a turnover differential of -9 in those games. Auburn had plenty of opportunities to win all three.

“Should the fans expect more than a 2-3 start? Absolutely,” Freeze said Monday. “I mean, we could easily be sitting here at 5-0. But we didn’t get it done.”

The Tigers, indeed, didn’t get it done. And now they’re about to enter an October stretch where they’ll play No. 5 Georgia, No. 9 Missouri and a Kentucky team that just upset a top-10 Ole Miss team all on the road.

So Freeze made a point to focus on the big picture Monday in what was his longest opening statement to a weekly press conference to date.

“My ask is to stick with us through our growing pains and support our guys and efforts and our recruiting efforts, because the results are going to come,” Freeze said. “We're not that far off. I hope the '25 recruiting class sees that, knows they have a chance to come in and immediately impact this program, just like the '24 class is currently doing. … Building takes time, but our process, when complete, is going to make everyone very, very proud to wear the orange and blue.

“It's making ground, the process is. I see it. The record doesn't reflect it — even when playing, I think, 12 freshmen. A combination of the 49 guys that played Saturday, if you count our kicker, 24 freshmen and sophomores that played the majority of the snaps. I use that for my recruiting pitch: We'll play you early.”

The foundation of Freeze’s rebuild — and his current pleas for patience — is signing top-notch recruiting classes through the high school ranks and turning them loose early in their careers. For a program that struggled in recruiting and retention during the previous administration, there’s a lot of ground to be made up.

Any notion of a talent deficit when compared to Cal and Arkansas, the first two teams Auburn lost to this season, can be easily disproven on paper. But Oklahoma was an opponent made up of top-10 talent, even if injuries have rocked its offense.

Despite that, Auburn was up by two scores in the fourth quarter on Oklahoma and should have walked away with the victory with better decision-making. (Freeze spoke at length about his regrets from the loss last Saturday, including not giving the ball to Jarquez Hunter on an empty red-zone trip early and throwing the ball in the fourth quarter instead of relying on field position and defense.)

When the dust settled from the self-inflicted meltdown last Saturday, the box score and the game tape reflected an Auburn team that is increasingly leaning on its youth.

CB Kayin Lee (Taylor McLaughlin/Auburn Tigers)

Auburn’s defense was led in tackles by freshman linebacker Demarcus Riddick, who did an excellent job of spying Oklahoma’s dual-threat quarterback. Before Saturday, Riddick had only played 19 snaps, with 11 of them coming in the opener against Alabama A&M.

The No. 2 player in tackles was true sophomore defensive end Keldric Faulk, the crown jewel of Freeze’s first recruiting class in 2023. Fellow true sophomore Kayin Lee and true freshman Kaleb Harris both were among the tie for third in tackles.

True freshman cornerback Jay Crawford got his first career start, never left the field and was never even targeted in coverage. He hasn’t given up a single catch this season.

For a full view of the underclassman production, let’s take a look at how many freshmen and sophomores played on defense Saturday against Oklahoma, courtesy of the Pro Football Focus snap counts: