Breaking down the numbers behind Auburn’s overhaul at WR
“We had to restructure that room. I hate saying it like that sometimes. But for what we want to do, we had to change that room.”
During his year and a half as the head football coach at Auburn, Hugh Freeze has been rather blunt about a number of topics.
The most recent one came last Wednesday morning, before his round at the Regions Tradition Celebrity Pro-Am golf event in Hoover.
When he was asked about the Tigers’ recent signing of Penn State transfer wide receiver KeAndre Lambert-Smith, Freeze immediately gave an unfiltered thought about that position group.
“We had to restructure that room,” Freeze said. “I hate saying it like that sometimes. But for what we want to do, we had to change that room.”
Freeze was critical about the wide receivers throughout 2023, starting with issues that he saw during preseason practices. That bled into the season, when the Tigers threw for the fewest yards in the SEC for the second straight year.
Of course, not all of Auburn’s passing game problems came down to the wide receivers. Starting quarterback Payton Thorne had his fair share of struggles, notably against quality opponents who finished with winning records.
The highly anticipated partnership between Freeze and offensive coordinator Philip Montgomery didn’t go according to plan, with the former parting ways with the latter after just one season.
Type your email…
Subscribe
Yet it’s easy to see where Auburn’s wideouts fell well short last season. Auburn’s receiving leader was transfer tight end Rivaldo Fairweather, but the top wide receiver in terms of yardage was Ja’Varrius Johnson at 347 yards in 10 games.
That mark was the lowest for Auburn’s top wide receiver in a season since a losing campaign all the way back in 1991, when Herbert Casey finished with 277 yards. Johnson’s 347 yards were also the fewest for a No. 1 wide receiver in any SEC offense since Mississippi State in 2017.
Wide receiver production has never historically been a hallmark of Auburn football. The Tigers’ all-time leader in receiving yardage and touchdowns is the late Terry Beasley, who played more than 50 years ago. Auburn hasn’t had a wide receiver drafted in the second round of the NFL Draft since 2002 and hasn’t had one drafted in the first round since 1984.
But Freeze, who made a name for himself in coaching with his high-powered offenses, is different. Five of his receivers from his time at Ole Miss were taken in the NFL Draft, including first-rounder Laquon Treadwell and future All-Pros A.J. Brown and DK Metcalf. He even produced two NFL Draft picks at wide receiver at Liberty.
So Auburn looked to overhaul its wide receiver room after the struggles of the 2023 season. The restructuring was massive, with seven new additions and eight outgoing departures. Only Camden Brown and Caleb Burton III return from last year’s unit.
The changes to the wide receiver room were two-fold: First, Auburn wanted to rebuild through top-tier high-school recruiting — like it wants to do across its entire roster. And second, Auburn wanted to bring in impact transfers after not getting much out of its pickups there last year.
The end result is an unprecedented flip of nearly an entire position group. Freeze and his staff have staked a lot of their hopes for much-needed offensive improvement in 2024 on this overhaul.
While nothing is guaranteed in college football, the moves should give Auburn fans more optimism heading into the fall. When you look at the numbers in the full context, what the Tigers have done out wide this offseason has the chance to be the shift the program has needed for quite some time.
Leave a Reply