Hugh Freeze highlights good, bad from Auburn wide receivers
As the season grows closer, Auburn head coach Hugh Freeze has been happy with his wide receiver unit. Nonetheless, the 53-year-old head coach is nowhere near satisfied with the group.
“They had an incredible week. Not so much today,” Freeze said earlier this week. “We had too many [missed attempts] on our RPO routes, choosing the wrong options. We got to look at ourselves as coaches first and see what that was. I mean there were some good plays… This week, I thought we took a step forward in the totality of that room.
“We had guys that had some good catches today, but way too many opportunities in the RPO game that the quarterback made the right decision to throw the ball and a receiver is — again, I haven’t watched the film — either, loafing, which we can’t have, or, he chose to run the wrong route. And again, we have to look at us as coaches first on that and make sure we get cleaned up.”
A failure in the RPO system will be a failure for the Auburn offense. With the addition of new offensive coordinator Philip Montgomery, Freeze plans to utilize a dangerous RPO system. Freeze knows what he’s doing. Previously at Liberty from 2019-22, Freeze led the Flames to four bowl games and a 34-15 record.
While the RPO system is deadly when ran correctly, it can be confusing. This isn’t the first time the coaches have expressed concern about the complex offensive scheme.
“I think we’re making strides. We have a long way to go,” Montgomery said back in the spring. “When you start implementing something that is complexly new and different than the norm that’s been around here, it takes time. We wanted to make sure we’re getting our foundations right to add and build to that when the time comes. I didn’t want to rush through the process of it.
“We don’t want to be the jack of all trades and the master of none. We’ve done a good job of pacing through some things, now scaling back and trying to be precise of how we added and what we added as we move forward.”
Auburn has the pieces out wide to be a legitimate SEC threat. Along with returning players, Freeze picked up North Texas‘ Jyaire Shorter, Cincinnati‘s Nick Mardner and Ohio State‘s Caleb Burton II through the transfer portal this fall.
Watch Auburn’s revamped wide receiver corps begin the 2023 campaign on Sept. 2 in a matchup against UMass.