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On Saturday afternoon, the Deep South's Oldest Rivalry will be renewed for the 129th time as the Auburn Tigers make the short trip to Athens to take on the Georgia Bulldogs. The oddsmakers and analysts will agree that the 5th-ranked Bulldogs are the overwhelming favorite to hand Auburn their fourth loss of the season, but listen to Kirby Smart talk about Tigers head coach Hugh Freeze, and you might start to second-guess the idea that the Bulldogs will cruise this Saturday.
“Got a really good football team. Got a lot of respect for Hugh. Gone against him for a number of years,” Smart said on Monday, according to Jordan D. Hill of 247Sports.
As opposing head coaches, Smart and Freeze have only faced each other twice. The first time, in Kirby Smart's first season as the head coach of the Georgia Football program, Hugh Freeze and the Ole Miss Rebels scored a 45-14 blowout win over the 12th-ranked undefeated Bulldogs. Their second meeting came last year, in Freeze's first season at Auburn, when the Tigers nearly pulled off an upset over the top-ranked Bulldogs before All-American tight end Brock Bowers took over in the 4th quarter.
For whatever reason, Hugh Freeze has given Kirby Smart fits, even dating back to when Smart was the defensive coordinator at Alabama. Freeze's Rebels handed Alabama their only loss of the season in 2015, upsetting the Tide in front of 101,000 fans at Bryant-Denny Stadium. In 2014, Ole Miss beat Bama in Oxford by the final score of 23-17.
“He's hung his hat on running the RPO, but he's evolved,” Smart said of his Week 6 opponent. “He's still done those. He still has the quarterback make decisions on whether to throw it or run it … He's added wrinkles and twists that you see in the NFL and see it in college football.”
Hugh Freeze's willingness to allow his quarterbacks make those crucial decisions bit him and the Tigers in the behind this past weekend, as Auburn blew an 11-point 4th quarter lead to the Oklahoma Sooners in part because quarterback Payton Thorne threw an ill-advised interception in the final frame.
Georgia has won eight of nine meetings against Auburn since Kirby Smart took over as head coach in 2016, but Smart and the Bulldogs find themselves in an unfamiliar position as they get ready for Auburn… for the first time since 2020, the Georgia Bulldogs are preparing for a regular season game as they're coming off a loss. Will the effects of a heartbreaking defeat at Alabama linger, or is Auburn the perfect below .500 opponent to get Georgia back on track?
