Loser leaves town: What coach needs an SEC win more: Hugh Freeze or Brent Venables?

We've got ourselves a good old-fashioned Anxiety Bowl on the Plains on Saturday, as the Oklahoma Sooners travel to take on the Auburn Tigers in a game both sides desperately need to win. OU slogged its way through non-conference play, then suffered a humbling SEC debut against Tennessee, getting manhandled in primetime in a game in which starting quarterback Jackson Arnold was benched before halftime. Brent Venables' defense has been game all year, but the offense under new coordinator Seth Littrell remains stuck in neutral (amid a bevy of injuries to the receiving corps and offensive line, to be fair).

Auburn, meanwhile, had hoped for significant improvement in year two under Hugh Freeze. But despite tearing it up on the recruiting trail, the Tigers feel more or less exactly like the team we saw last season: All of the old problems — turnovers, run defense, Payton Thorne being Payton Thorne — seemed no closer to being fixed in ugly home losses to Cal and Arkansas.

These are two marquee programs whose fans bring high expectations, expectations that have very much not been met so far this year. Only one coach, however, will have the chance to turn that narrative around with a win on Saturday. Which one needs it more?

Why Hugh Freeze needs this win much more than Brent Venables

This isn't to say that things are going great in Norman right now, but the answer here is clearly Freeze. Oklahoma certainly expected a better start to the season, but it's also been ravaged by injuries, and Venables still has plenty working in his favor. His defense remains as stingy as ever; the Sooners held that explosive Tennessee attack to 4.7 yards per play on Saturday and sits 13th in SP+ on the season. And lest we forget that this team won 10 games last year, including a win over Texas. Recruiting is going well enough, there's still plenty of talent here, and OU might have something special in freshman QB Michael Hawkins, who flashed some Kyler Murray-esque upside while filling in for Arnold last weekend.

If you're looking for silver linings for Freeze, however ... well, you'll be there a while. Offense is supposedly Freeze's calling card, but after ignoring all common sense in not upgrading at QB this offseason, Auburn is once again brutal to watch on that side of the ball. Thorne is exactly the player he was last year, and replacement Hank Brown couldn't stop giving the ball away in the loss to Arkansas. Freeze is recruiting as well as ever, but even with a bevy of five-star receivers now on board, the Tigers are showing no signs of improvement — a fact that falls directly at the feet of the head coach.

There's also the broader context to consider. Freeze was a questionable hire even at the time; his tenure at Ole Miss ended in disaster, and his four years at Liberty featured a bunch of eight-win seasons against pretty soft schedules — not bad, but hardly overwhelming evidence that he was ready to return to the SEC. At this point, it's unclear what exactly Freeze's value add is as a head coach. He knows how to go into high schools in the South and get talent, but he's yet to fully maximize the transfer portal, and he's yet to update his offense to bring it into this decade.

With Venables, the question is mostly how he'll get his offense back on track, a question that can be answer with a single coordinator hire. Evidence suggests he's still among the brightest defensive minds in the game, he's bringing in the requisite talent and he's hardly lost his locker room. Freeze, on the other hand, has yet to prove that he knows how to win at this level in 2024. With a loss on Saturday, those questions will only grow louder.