Hugh Freeze addresses play of Auburn wide receivers

The Auburn offense was a mess last year and if it’s going to get better it’s going to take both improved play from the quarterbacks and from the Auburn wide receivers.

Unfortunately, coach Hugh Freeze was less than thrilled with the receivers coming out of the team’s first scrimmage last week.

“We still have not had a good scrimmage,” Freeze said, having worked with the group in the spring and now through two weeks of fall camp. “When I watched the film after the scrimmage it made me sick. … It was about 88 loafs on Saturday. That’s an exaggeration, but there were a lot.”

Loafs meaning lack of effort situations that showed up on film, typically.

The first-year head coach outlined what the issues were, exactly, for the Auburn wide receivers.

“Still way too many (missed assignments) or when I say MAs, the route is truncated — if it’s supposed to be at 12 (yards depth) it’s at 10,” he said. “We’ve got to get all of that cleaned up and we’ve got two weeks to do that. But they’ve had a solid week.”

The bounce-back has been encouraging from the Auburn receivers, but there’s an interesting element to it. The team hosted the scrimmage in a different location than its normal practices, and that’s where the issues popped up.

Freeze thought it may have been heat-related.

“I didn’t think we competed and it was almost like we just melted under that heat,” he said. “We’ve handled the heat pretty well, it’s been maybe the hottest camp I’ve experienced. Course when you’re here (at practices) you get to take a break inside and we cool them down with all the water mist and all that. You go over there for that game there’s none of that going on that day. I just didn’t think we handled it extremely well.”

The good news is since that near-puke-inducing first scrimmage for the Auburn wide receivers they’ve been much improved.

Freeze actually praised the group on Thursday heading into this Saturday’s second scrimmage, saying the team had its best practice on Tuesday night.

“I’m excited for another opportunity at it this Saturday to see how we handle it,” he said. “But they bounced back pretty good this week. Camden Brown finally practiced yesterday and looked decent, so hopefully that adds some more depth to that room.”