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Bingo.

Nailed it.

Now nail those words to the wall.

The time for excuses is officially over and the pleas for patience have expired.

It’s time for Freeze to be the coach Auburn thinks they hired.

No more Freeze Warnings. That campus should be a solid sheet of ice given the talent this coaching staff has acquired in the last two recruiting classes.

The 2025 class rankings are clear for Auburn in the three major recruiting services.

247Sports: No. 6.
On3: No. 6.
Rivals: No. 8
This is the second straight year in the top-10 for Freeze and Co., and while he said something about three in a row, it’s time to start showing some progress.

That means using more than high school recruiting to build Auburn back to the winner it has practically always been. Where the biggest failure of last offseason was not being aggressive enough in the quarterback transfer portal market, there’s no excuse to slow-play that aspect of program building.

When you have an Indiana program skyrocketing from a 3-9 record last year to a playoff bid largely on the backs of transfers, excuses fall flat.

And four straight 7-loss seasons aren’t the standard. Neither is an eight-year drought playing top-tier bowl games previously known as the NY6.

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Freeze was hired to rescue this program from a 5-7 season in 2022 and he delivered a 6-7 season followed by … 5-7 this past year.

As the Tigers thawed, Freeze pointed to the recruiting success as a reason to believe better days were to come. Truly, like a broken record on Mondays after underachieving losses, Freeze practically pleaded for time to prove the culture wasn’t broken and the stars of the future would bring a better tomorrow.

Welp, the sun’s setting on that mess.

And that new dawn is approaching with both promise and the deferred patience of maddening mediocrity past due.

Freeze last week thanked the Tiger fans for sticking with this team when the on-field product made that a chore. A five-game P4 losing streak was nothing short of an embarrassment, not just for the scores but the routes taken to that destination. Auburn played mostly teams from the bottom half of the SEC and still finished 2-6 in the league.

And yet Jordan-Hare Stadium was almost always packed. Those who endured losses in the first three home SEC games, plus Cal in September, were rewarded with the cathartic 43-41 win over then-SEC contender Texas A&M. That was a nod to what was possible when Freeze and the Auburn machine gets cranking.

The 28-14 Iron Bowl loss was a reminder of the reality.

Auburn wasted four Alabama turnovers, showed flashes but was ultimately not competitive. It showed the distance still to travel.

And, perhaps, the opportunity awaiting this incoming class.

Make no mistake about it, there are some true studs in this incoming class.

Five-star defensive lineman Jared Smith is one of the top recruits Auburn’s signed in the last decade. The Thompson product is a 6-6, 245-pound force with the potential to reset opposing lines of scrimmage. Opelika product Malik Autry is another five-star defensive lineman Auburn needs because SEC games are won and lost up front.

They are two of the seven top-100 prospects in the 247Sports ranking who signed with Auburn. That doesn’t include Alvin Henderson, the running back who shattered Alabama high school records at Elba. Also outside that seven was Elijah Melendez, a linebacker from Kissimmee, Florida who Freeze called “the most rocked up high school linebacker I’ve ever signed.”

Among those seven is Deuce Knight, the four-star lefty passer Auburn got to flip from Notre Dame. He’s got the potential to be a star but might need a year in the program before going primetime.

So that leaves Auburn with a familiar problem facing a season it must bust the seven-loss streak. It needs a game-ready quarterback from the transfer portal, especially with Payton Thorne graduating and his two backups -- Hank Brown and Holden Geriner -- hitting the market themselves.

There’s no excuse for Auburn to slow play the passer transfer portal after seeing the impact that exact failure had on the 2024 season.

The time for patience has passed.

Gosh, golly, wait for next year won’t fly after another top-10 recruiting class.

And Freeze said it best when applying his own pressure with the “you can say you don’t have enough talent” line.

This post was edited on 12/10/24 at 1:05 pm