Week 10 Reactions and Takeaways | Hugh Freeze Fired, Texas is Back, ACC Chaos
Plus, USC surges into the playoff mix, Oklahoma survives Knoxville, and Georgia won't die.
It feels like we’ve taken a couple of weeks off from the monumental Saturdays we were spoiled with through the first few months of the season. That’s not to say there wasn’t plenty to like this past weekend, but let’s be honest — Game 7 of the World Series overshadowed just about everything else.
Throw in the ongoing standoff between Disney and YouTube TV, and not many people actually saw what went down over the weekend. Luckily for you, I caught it all.
Another head coach got fired (shocking, I know), and the ACC race somehow got even wilder. Meanwhile, the Group of Six CFP chase remains a total mess, with a few new teams jumping into the mix. Like I said last week, the final month of this college football season is going to be a doozy, so buckle up and enjoy the ride.
Auburn Fires Hugh Freeze
It seems that each week there’s a new head coach on the coaching block. Sam Pittman, Mike Gundy, James Franklin, Billy Napier, Brian Kelly, and now Hugh Freeze at Auburn. Never before in most of our lifetimes has a coaching carousel been this bananas.
Freeze’s demise at Auburn is quite simple: he couldn’t figure out quarterback. In his two-plus years on The Plains, Freeze had the likes of Payton Thorne and Jackson Arnold under center, and that’s frankly not good enough to compete in the SEC. What’s even more infuriating for Auburn fans is that there were better options available, yet either Freeze didn’t want them or he instead wanted to prove to the world that he could develop any quarterback, no matter the skill level.
It was that hubris that caught up to him in the end, as by the time Freeze’s Tigers lost 10-3 to Kentucky on Saturday night, there was no turning back. Auburn was 15-19 overall and an even worse 6-16 in SEC play under Freeze, and that was a wrap. That’s simply not good enough for a program that believes it can win a national championship. So, for the third time since 2020, Auburn fired its head football coach and is now on the hunt for somebody new to run the operation.
Just like with many of the places that have come open, the internal politics at Auburn will play a role in who the hire ends up being. On the surface, the easy choice is Tulane head coach Jon Sumrall. He grew up in Alabama and was a fantastic coach at Troy before taking the Tulane job. He’s won everywhere he’s been, and that’s something that should carry real weight during his candidacy. If everyone were operating in the right headspace, Sumrall would be a slam dunk, no-doubt-about-it hire. But this is Auburn University, the same school that led a coup to push out Gus Malzahn and then orchestrated an even bigger power play to oust Brian Harsin. There’s no telling which direction this search could take, and given that some of the early hot boards for the job include Jimbo Fisher’s name, we could be in for a bumpy ride.
Texas is Back?
Don’t let the final score fool you: Texas commanded this game from start to finish, albeit with a little bit of an onside kick scare at the end.
For the lucky few who were actually able to watch this game (thanks, Disney and YouTube TV), Texas roared out to a 24-10 lead at the half, and even then it didn’t feel all that close. Everything was working. Arch Manning was throwing dimes — he completed 25 of 33 passes for 328 yards and three touchdowns. For the first time in what feels like forever, his throws had that zip that had been missing for much of the season. He was decisive and poised, which is a perfect recipe for a good day at the office.
Pair that with a running game that, while not dominant, did just enough to get what it wanted. Quintrevion Wisner, who’d struggled to ground and pound all year, carried the ball 18 times for 75 yards and a score. In total, the Longhorns rushed for 100 yards on the day, and while that may not seem like a lot to some, it’s definitely an improvement for a Texas offense that hadn’t been able to get anything going on the ground for much of the season.
With the 34-31 win (again, the final score makes this seem way closer than it actually was), Texas is inexplicably 7-2 and 4-1 in the SEC. For weeks, I have been declaring it dead, but here we are. The team’s goals are still in front of it, and should it go on the road and beat Georgia in two weeks, then we’re facing a situation where the Longhorns — once left for dead — would be right back in the thick of the national title conversation.
For Vanderbilt, the loss is tough but not the end of the world. If anything, it can be proud of how it almost stole victory out of the jaws of defeat with its excellent effort in the fourth quarter. Still, it’s the team’s second loss of the year, which means that any more setbacks would eliminate the Commodores from College Football Playoff contention. Luckily for the folks from Nashville, the schedule is such that winning out the rest of the way isn’t that improbable. But this is college football in 2025, and running the table against Kentucky, Auburn, and Tennessee — as doable as that might seem — won’t be a cakewalk.
