There are often repeated patterns for covering sports teams. A national media person slams a certain team or coach. The norm is for SEC football, team-specific sites, like this one, to debate the punditry. Counter responses may be fueled by better information or by unapologetic homerism.
When a team-specific site supports national, negative coverage of a team, fans of that team should take notice. It can mean that no logical refutation is possible. This is the current case for the FanSided site Fly War Eagle (FWE). FWE is more than a credible source for Auburn Sports. It provides in-depth perspectives worth the attention of not just Auburn fans.
Why this matters to Alabama football and other SEC football fans is that FWE is on the precipice of totally giving up on Hugh Freeze. That interests Alabama Crimson Tide fans, but there is no reason to celebrate. Hugh Freeze at Auburn for the long term would benefit Alabama Football. If FWE is correct, as it almost always is, Freeze may not last throughout the 2025 season.
Multiple recent FWE articles were in response to what Matt Hayes wrote for USA Today. Hayes wrote a detailed piece about Freeze's play-calling plan, but the opening paragraph explains the salient point: "It's just not going to work. The college football season hasn't even begun, and the Hugh Freeze experiment at Auburn is all but over."
It is close to a mandate that team-specific sites, such as Fly War Eagle and Bama Hammer, must not give up on a team before a season begins. FWE has not given up on Auburn. Reading between the lines suggests they have given up on Hugh Freeze.
On Aug. 14, three FWE articles provided little defense of Hugh Freeze. A detailed defense was about the claim that Freeze was making his team go easy on QB Jackson Arnold. Andrew Hughes reminded that protecting quarterbacks in practices is standard practice in football.
Fly War Eagle on Hugh Freeze's SEC Football Future
Andrew Hughes also wrote about the Freeze plan to have three offensive play-callers, "There's no reasonable or rational answer to why Freeze would arrange this. In terms of the perhaps unreasonable and irrational, Freeze could just be stacking excuses for why he shouldn't be fired, since small adjustments can be made to play-calling... The excuses need to end. The gimmicky play-calling needs to end. And if they can't? Freeze's tenure as the Auburn Tigers head football coach needs to end."