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Tennessee football: 4 reasons Vols should be Hugh Freeze’s top landing spot

By Caleb Calhoun

OXFORD, MS - OCTOBER 29: Mississippi Rebels head coach Hugh Freeze greets fans as they walk down the Walk of Champions in the Grove before an NCAA college football game against the Auburn Tigers on October 29, 2016 in Oxford, Mississippi. (Photo by Butch Dill/Getty Images)
OXFORD, MS - OCTOBER 29: Mississippi Rebels head coach Hugh Freeze greets fans as they walk down the Walk of Champions in the Grove before an NCAA college football game against the Auburn Tigers on October 29, 2016 in Oxford, Mississippi. (Photo by Butch Dill/Getty Images) /
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Photo by Jonathan Bachman/Getty Images
Photo by Jonathan Bachman/Getty Images /

3. There will be lower expectations for Hugh Freeze to succeed.

While Tennessee football will let Hugh Freeze have complete control of the offense, the same thing would be true of the Alabama Crimson Tide under Nick Saban. And if he became the Liberty Flames’ head coach, he would obviously be in control.

However, he needs to go to a place where he can exceed expectations as well. And there is no place with lower expectations than the Vols. After a 4-8 year in 2017, they went 5-7 under new head coach Jeremy Pruitt in 2018.

So next year, Freeze can gain a lot of respect just by being decent. That’s not going to be the case at Alabama. The Crimson Tide had the best offense in football this past year and will return Tua Tagovailoa. Considering Freeze is an offensive genius, it’ll be a disappointment if Tua doesn’t win the Heisman running away.

Meanwhile, Liberty managed a 6-6 record in 2018, their first year in FBS play. If Freeze replaces Turner Gill as head coach there, he’ll be expected to dramatically build on that immediately. And, obviously, he’ll have a few more personal expectations by coaching at a Christian fundamentalist school like Liberty. That could be a bit dicey as well.

Even Auburn and Florida State bring more expectations. Both programs expect to be in national title contention immediately next year. That’s not the same for the Vols at all. So Freeze could perform much worse and exceed expectations on Rocky Top, dramatically lifting his profile.

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