Some thoughts on Hugh Freeze and a look at Kentucky
Why Hugh Freeze's antics made me think of Matt Luke and a quick look at Kentucky
Ole Miss opens conference play this week. Today, we’ll take a look at Kentucky and examine Ole Miss’ first ever official injury report. But first, I had a few thoughts on a pair of former Ole Miss coaches.
Hugh Freeze is being Hugh Freeze, again
Hugh Freeze has consistently been in the news the last couple of weeks for the wrong reasons. Auburn has sputtered to a 2-2 start to the season with home losses to a Cal team with low expectations and an Arkansas squad with a head coach perceived to be a lame duck.
Auburn has scored just 14 points in each of the two losses. Freeze is in control of the Tigers’ offense. His willingness to admit that fact seems to differ based on the most recent game’s outcome. Auburn’s offense was stagnant in Freeze’s first season and was seemingly handicapped by below average quarterback play led by Michigan State transfer Payton Thorne. Freeze and his staff were either unwilling or unable to go find a better quarterback in the offseason in the transfer portal. Ultimately, Freeze chose to stick with Thorne. The results have again been underwhelming. Freeze benched Thorne after the Cal loss in favor of freshman Hank Brown. Brown looked fine against a lowly New Mexico team, but was so bad in the loss to Arkansas, Freeze benched him and went back to Thorne.
Brown and Thorne have combined to throw eight interceptions in four games. Auburn’s offense is a rudderless ship. Who is at fault for this? Apparently that’s a topic for discussion. Asked about play calling after the Cal loss, Freeze said that only one or two play calls could have been better and the rest was poor execution. Woof. Not exactly sticking up for your players.
After the loss to Arkansas, Freeze was asked how the offense can improve. He answered like this: “I know that there’s people open and I know that we’re running the football,” Freeze said. “We’ve got to find a guy that won’t throw it to the other team and we’ve got to find running backs that hold on to it. ... The scheme is what most everybody in the country is running, some sort of. But you’ve got to have a good quarterback in whatever system you’re going to choose.”
I imagine Brown and Thorne are still peeling chunks of rubber off their backs from the tires of the bus Freeze threw them under. If that wasn’t bad enough, Freeze, an always gracious loser, cobbled together this dynamite quote on his weekly coach’s show: “I mean, no offense to Arkansas. I love Sam Pittman, I hope he wins the rest of his games but the hard truth is if we play them nine more times, we beat them nine times.”
The surefire sign of a self-aware person is one who routinely says things like “the facts are..” or “the truth is..” followed by a completely subjective opinion that borders on delusion.
The reason Freeze is the current target of heightened criticism isn’t just because Auburn has lost twice at home in four games. It’s due to his inability to ever take blame for failure. Are the things he’s said somewhat true? Probably, but he’s paid handsomely to accept responsibility for the results of Auburn’s football program and he’s unwilling to do that. Is anyone noticing a pattern yet?
As I watched it all unfold, for some reason I began to think of Matt Luke — a man who was responsible for sifting through the wreckage of the first SEC program Freeze torpedoed and then abandoned. On July 20th 2017, Freeze resigned as the head football coach at Ole Miss after it was discovered he dialed a Tampa-area escort service on a university-issued cell phone. A program already teetering on the brink of implosion on the heels of a 5-7 season and a five-year long NCAA investigation creeping toward its peak. In February of 2017, Ole Miss received a second notice of allegations from the NCAA — this one centered around the football program. Ole Miss self-imposed a bowl ban for that season shortly after. Now, thanks to a weakness for hookers, the man responsible for the mess wouldn’t be around for the implosion or the clean-up.
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Luke, an Ole Miss alum, stepped up to the plate as the interim head coach for the 2017 season. A lifelong Rebels fan and former player, I imagine Luke viewed this as his dream job come early, despite the dire state of the program and significant sanctions looming. Most of you know the rest of the story. He got the full-time job after an Egg Bowl win, struggled to a 5-7 record in 2018 and a 4-8 mark in 2019 and was fired. Luke tried to tackle the nearly impossible challenge of cleaning up a mess he did not make.
I covered the Luke era at Ole Miss. One thing I always admired about him is the grace that he handled the situation with. There were not many memorable moments or high points during his tenure. But Luke always spoke to the media. He gave direct answers to difficult questions. He never once blamed the players. In 2018, he never blamed the two coordinators he didn’t hire. He never blamed the postseason ban or scholarship restrictions he was required to adhere to while attempting to recruit his way out of the mess.
“For us to start out where we did and end up in the top 25, it’s a credit to our staff and the job they did,” Luke said at his 2018 signing day press conference. “We just focused on the positives and went out and sold Ole Miss. Other people can say yes or no that it didn’t or did affect things, but we are just excited about the kids we have.”
In contrast, I remember what Freeze said at his signing day press conference in 2017 as the arrival of the second notice of allegations loomed.
“We’ve suffered penalties,” Freeze said at Ole Miss’ annual NSD press conference, “This recruiting class: it was a penalty. To be under the cloud we’re under.”
Perpetually a victim, he went on to complain about the negative recruiting other schools took part in and vowed to never forget it.
If you had no context other than those two quotes, you’d probably wonder which man was responsible for putting the program in such a bad spot.
I honestly can’t ever recall a single instance of Luke getting snappy or mildly upset at any reporter or question he was asked.
On the night Elijah Moore’s dog pee celebration cost Ole Miss the 2019 Egg Bowl, and ultimately cost Luke his job, he opened the presser by thanking his seniors and lamenting how badly he felt that their career ended this way. He called Moore a good kid who got caught up in the moment and that it wasn’t a reflection of who Moore is as a person. He spoke about his eagerness to right the ship and build toward next year. Luke was fired three days later.
The point of this segment is not to arbitrate whether or not Luke got a fair shake at Ole Miss. It’s not to debate the value of Luke’s work during a trying time for the program. It’s not to insinuate that Freeze harmed Luke’s career. Luke was paid handsomely for his services. It’s to point out the differences in how the two men conducted themselves while at Ole Miss. Freeze never had the option of sticking around for the implosion and rebuild due to his own actions. But the contrast in leadership and accountability (or lack thereof) displayed by the two while in charge of the program is pretty eye-opening to think about.
I am not sure what occupation that you, the reader, currently hold. But imagine your boss actively destroying that company or department as he blamed anyone other than himself during the process, you take over for him with significantly fewer resources, get fired for imminent failure, and look up four years later and your disgraced boss has a better job than you elsewhere — congrats on the promotion though!
I am not sure why Freeze’s comments made me think of Luke. Maybe it reminded me of the flaws that doomed him at Ole Miss, and left me wondering if he’ll create a similar mess on the Plains that someone else will have to clean up.
Freeze appears to have learned next to nothing from his time at Ole Miss. I don’t how his time at Auburn will turn out. But I have to wonder if he’s shortening his own leash by refusing to take accountability for anything, throwing players and staff under the bus, and repeatedly embarrassing the program’s brand. I guess we will soon find out.
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A look at Kentucky
SEC play begins for Ole Miss on Saturday with a Kentucky team that enters 2-2 (0-2). Here are 10 things I find interesting about Kentucky.
Kentucky’s season got off to an odd start. Its season opener against Southern Miss was shortened two quarters due to weather. I have to imagine this was a suboptimal scenario for a Wildcats offense looking to break in a new quarterback in Georgia transfer Brock Vandagriff.
Vandagriff is a former 4-star prospect who lost a quarterback battle last year to current Georgia starter Carson Beck and transferred to Kentucky last winter. Vandagriff has not been good in the two SEC games, but was very effective in wins over Southern Miss and Ohio. He’s completed nearly 70 percent of his throws in the two victories and less than 45 percent of his passes in the two defeats. In both SEC games, he was reluctant to throw the football down the field.
Kentucky is on its fourth offensive coordinator in as many years. Bush Hamdan took the job last winter after previously serving as the offensive coordinator at Boise State. His offense frequently utilizes play action and screens. Mark Stoops has consistently hired offensive coordinators with NFL experience. It has yet to work well, outside of one year with Will Levis (during Liam Cohen’s first stint as OC).
Kentucky has a stout defense led by its defensive line that has been particularly effective stopping the run. Defensive tackle Deone Walker is a future pro, stands at 6-foot-6, 345 lbs, and fortifies what is a physically imposing interior defensive line. The Wildcats are allowing just 74 yards per game on the ground and 2.7 yards per rush.
Barrion Brown is an electric return specialist who Ole Miss would be wise to avoid kicking to. Kentucky desperately needs more consistency from Brown as a receiver, however.
Dane Key is Kentucky’s best receiver and will be a challenge for this Ole Miss defense. He’s caught 12 passes for 204 yards. The Wildcats’ biggest issue to this point has been consistently getting him the football.
Vandagriff has been sacked seven times this season. Six of those sacks came in the two SEC losses. The offensive line has struggled to consistently protect him and allow him to get the football to the likes of Key and Brown, among others.
Kentucky is converting 45.8 percent of its third down attempts. The Ole Miss defense has only allowed opponents to convert 21.8 percent of the time. Obviously, the differences in competition through four games must be factored into that.
Ohio State transfer running back Chip Trayanum was cleared to practice this week but was listed as doubtful on Kentucky’s initial injury report released on Wednesday. Trayanum has yet to play this year due to injury but was a major transfer pick-up for the Wildcats in the offseason.
Kentucky held both South Carolina and Georgia to under 170 yards of passing offense.
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Ole Miss releases first ever injury report
Shortly before the start of the 2024 season, the SEC announced that it would mandate that its programs put out an injury report prior to all conference games. This followed a measure implemented by the Big Ten last year.
For decades, college football coaches treated injury updates like government secrets. The entire practice was as paranoid as it was moronic. As if the other team’s coaching staffs, who have all spent decades in the sport and likely know others on the opposing staff, can’t get a sense as to whether a player is going to suit up that week or not. But in some sense, I also understood it: if no one else is divulging injuries, why would you be the only program in the league to do it?
With sports gambling becoming as prominent as it currently is and the entire sport of college football shifting more toward an NFL-like model, some version of a mandated injury report was inevitable. For someone who now opines at distance and doesn’t cover the team day-to-day anymore, I love it. I imagine the beat reporters do too. It eliminates the stupid press conference chess match between coach and reporter, trying to read between the lines of the non-answer the coach gives about the availability of a player or his roster as a whole. Kiffin’s first couple of months in Oxford were my last as a reporter. One of the first things he told us was to never ask about injuries because he wasn’t discussing it. What a drastically different world we live in now than we did in 2020.
Anyway, as to what to make of Ole Miss’ first ever injury report, I am not sure. Jared Ivey being listed as probable is a good sign. Why Kiffin listed the entire offensive line as probable, I have no clue. Maybe they are following some sort of protocol. Maybe it’s his way of being a smartass. He’s made it known that he doesn’t like this new mandate and didn’t find it necessary.
Akelo Stone being listed as ‘doubtful’ is an injury I missed, though I did notice he was out last week. Safety Louis Moore being listed as ‘doubtful’ might not seem like good news, but with the way he was injured last week and how it looked, I figured it might have been serious and that he would be listed as “out” — but then again, what does any of this mean and how significant are these listings? Are there punishments for misrepresenting them like there is in the NFL? I don’t know the answer to any of this. But I suppose Ole Miss’ first injury report ever is history in and of itself.
Thanks for reading. We will have our Friday Five tomorrow.
The Hugh Freeze thing has been talked to death this week (not that I haven’t loved every minute of it) but I really liked you framing it against Matt Luke, who did a helluva job with what he had and never complained.