Auburn Tigers lost much more than a game against Missouri Tigers, making Hugh Freeze’s job even more difficult
Auburn’s star center Connor Lew suffers torn ACL in SEC loss to Missouri Tigers
The Auburn Tigers have been falling apart this season, losing four games in a row, all to top 20 teams in the country. Regardless of how many times Hugh Freeze says that the Tigers “are close” that doesn’t change the fact that it’s not good enough. Now his job just got a lot harder as the team announced that they’ll be missing perhaps their best player for the rest of the year due to an injury suffered against the Missouri Tigers on Saturday.
Connor Lew suffers torn ACL against Missouri
It turns out the Auburn Tigers lost much more than an overtime SEC game against Missouri over the weekend. Connor Lew, the team’s starting center and one of the best NFL Draft prospects in the country, went down with a torn ACL on the first drive of the second half on Saturday.
From that point on in the game Auburn managed just 10 points (including overtime). The Tigers offense was already struggling to protect Jackson Arnold at quarterback on Saturday (and this season), giving up the most sacks of any FBS team in the country. Now they’re going to be in even worse shape as Lew was the leader, communicator, and the driver of success along the offensive line for Auburn.
What now?
The team will turn to true freshman center Kail Ellis to step in and try to hold things together up front. Prior to the Missouri game Ellis had logged just 19 total snaps on the season and had actually held up well in pass blocking situations, but that was not the case on Saturday. Arnold was sacked five times against Missouri, and Ellis looked outmatched up front on several occasions amid his 40 snaps of action.
Hopefully Ellis can figure things out quickly, otherwise Jackson Arnold (and potentially Ashton Daniels who will be taking some QB1 snaps this week) is going to be under pressure perhaps even more moving forward. If that’s the case, then Hugh Freeze is not going to be holding onto his job much longer–and he might not anyway.
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