Hugh Freeze previews Auburn's first spring scrimmage, what he's looking for from players

New Auburn head coach Hugh Freeze now has a few spring practices under his belt at the helm for the Tigers. And with his team getting into the swing of things, many have their eyes set on the team’s first upcoming scrimmage. It will give Freeze and his new staff their first live look at their 2023 team, and he recently spoke on what that scrimmage will look like.

“I never know what exactly’s been put out, so it’s not going to be some all-out scrimmage. It’ll be situational by then whether it’s a second-in-seven period play third down live or a P-in-10 period, but we’re not quite ready yet just to all-out scrimmage,” Freeze explained. “And we’re certainly not ready to tackle our tailbacks yet or anybody, we’re going to protect them but there will be some fairly live situational stuff.”

It’s clear that Freeze wants his team to ease into full contact, starting with scenario-focused football before lining up against each other for extended plays at a time. And regarding what he’s looking for in his team in their scrimmage and beyond, Freeze has three key areas of emphasis that the Tigers will be focusing on.

“Alignment, assignment, and effort,” Freeze said. “Are we aligned correctly? We had a lot of those issues in practices one, two, and three on both sides. And are we doing the right assignment and are we doing it with the right effort? And if we’re doing our job as coaches then that should be improving from practice to practice to practice, and some of the stuff that you see that we saw in the first three hopefully diminishes some.”

Teaching and establishing a new system on both sides of the ball is not easy, as Auburn looks to balance getting their players up to speed and evaluating what their depth chart will look like in the future. But focusing on the fundamentals and controllable variables is a great place to start.

“And so it’s really about those three things. Whether we’re in a scrimmage situation and we are playing this period of practice live, or it’s thud, or it’s tag – until I see us aligning correctly and playing with great technique and doing our assignment right and playing with great effort, it’s going to be hard for me to feel like we’re improving at the rate that I want us to until I see those,” Freeze said.

Freeze and his staff will get a look at their squad live in and action in their first scrimmage soon, but fans will have to wait for Auburn’s spring game, which is scheduled for April 8.