The Auburn Tigers might not have produced those shiny results under Hugh Freeze over the years. But their recruiting classes have been top-notch, nevertheless. For instance, in 2024, Hugh Freeze had an 8th-ranked class with 5-star prospect Cam Coleman. Cherry on top? The head coach backed up the result and continued the top-notch recruitment with an 8th-ranked class again in the 2025 cycle. However, in the 2026 class? It all comes crashing down!!
The 2026 class looks weak when you compare it to other classes. For starters, there is no 5-star commit yet in their class, and with just 6 commits so far, the program is lagging far behind what they were out to do. And amid all these concerns came Kirby Smart from nowhere and has flipped the commitment of one of Hugh Freeze’s coveted linebackers. So, naturally, the fan base doesn’t look happy, and the anger is boiling over to social media.
Hayce Fawcett broke the news on his IG page about Auburn’s 4-star linebacker Shadarius Toodle, who has flipped to Georgia. “Four-Star LB Shadarius Toodle has flipped his Commitment from Auburn to Georgia, he tells me for @on3recruits. The 6’3 235 LB from Mobile, AL had been committed to the Tigers since July 2024,” wrote Fawcett. However, what added fuel to the fire was the message that Toodle sent after his commitment.
“If you want to be the best, why not play with the best? Georgia is home,” Fawcett relayed Toodle’s message on his IG post. However, one of the prominent accounts of the Auburn community, ‘auburnreport‘ with 20.2k followers on Instagram, weighed in on its opinion and didn’t blame the LB for his decommitment. Instead, the account urged Auburn to show the connection between recruiting prowess and on-field results.
“Can’t blame him It’s time to show that the talent we’ve brought in can translate to winning games.” The opinion is quite apt since Auburn has not shown why the recruits would want to come to their program. In the two years Hugh Freeze has been the head coach, the program finished 5-7 last year and went 6-7 overall before that. Toodle’s exit might have hurt, but without on-field results, no coach would want to come to Auburn, and the classes would fall in rankings.
Hugh Freeze bested by another SEC giant, apart from Georgia?
After an 11-14 start to his tenure, Hugh Freeze would at least want to earn a Bowl game berth this year in 2025. He even emphasized in a recent interview, “I’m not a fool, I think we’ve got to go to a bowl game.” But considering recruiting classes at Auburn these past two years, will fans get satisfied with just a Bowl birth? Probably not!! And these woes will deepen as Auburn’s recruiting classes get weaker with each passing year, courtesy of Alabama.
“I don’t think you’re going to out-recruit Alabama even with Saban gone, and so can you come up and snipe Alabama every once in a while. I mean, even if you think about the Malzahn era, he was able to come up and snipe Alabama every once in a while, but it wasn’t a consistent thing,” said Will Miles on the June 9th Episode of That SEC Football Podcast.
In the past two years, Hugh Freeze might have outmuscled Alabama (12 out of 25 top recruits as compared to Bama’s 1) with his in-state focus on recruiting. The 2026 class is showing Alabama bouncing back, and their brand name is working wonders even with Saban gone. They have landed Zyan Gibson and Kamhariyan Johnson and are pursuing Cederian Morgan heavily, with Saban himself meeting him. So, the pushback this year from Bama is strong. Can Hugh Freeze withstand the Crimson Tide?
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