Hugh Freeze details Auburn A-Day plans, tempers expectations, encourages excitement around 'momentum being created'

AUBURN — Hugh Freeze wants to set expectations ahead of Auburn’s annual A-Day game.

“I want to prepare the Auburn family that we’re going to do the best we can to give them a game that I hope they enjoy, but understand gosh, we don’t know who we are offensively right now?,” Freeze said. “That’s probably how I want that to be perceived by most.”

Here’s how it’s going to work: The defense will start the game with a set amount of points. Auburn’s coaching staff will decide what that point total is, and it will be the offense’s job to catch up to and surpass that point total during the game. If they do, the offense wins. If they don’t, the defense wins. Touchdowns, extra points and field goals will all count, but nothing else outside of normal scoring plays that occur within a football game.

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The winner may earn themselves a steak dinner, while the losers may have to settle for hot dogs, Freeze said.

Freeze faces the challenge that every college football coach faces when approaching a spring game. How do you avoid injuries, avoid showing too many schemes or plays on tape before the fall, all while giving fans a decent show in order to build excitement for the season that’s only five months away?

“The temptation and challenge is it can be a wasted day — for the actual practice itself, you want to make all 15 practices count,” Freeze said. “That’s a difficult setting for us to do what we want to do. It’s going to be videos, aired on the SEC Network over and over, there will be someone trying to video our signals, all the craziness that goes with our sport.”

There’s also the advantage of Hugh Freeze’s coaching staff being an unknown entering next season in terms of what exactly Freeze, Philip Montgomery and Ron Roberts will put on the field. And if you ask Freeze, which he was asked on Monday, there’s an easy solution to the spring game dilemmna.

“I’m going to cry again for the solution. The solution is allow us to scrimmage somebody on A-Day, another team. Everybody would get out of it what they want,” Freeze said.

Auburn’s first-year head coach mentions Alabama playing Troy and Auburn playing UAB, or “vice versa,” or include Alabama State, and then adopt a charity for all the proceeds of the day to be delivered to, whether that’s foster care, orphan care, within the state of Alabama.

“You are decreasing your injury possibilities by 50 percent, and coaches are smart enough to be told not to hit each other’s quarterbacks. I just think it would be great for the sport,” Freeze said. “I think it would be awesome. For the life of me, I don’t understand why we can pull that of and do something that would be helpful to some organization. Until that happens, all of us are going to be very guarded. You don’t want to get anybody hurt, and you know everybody is video taping your signals and everything else going on, so it’s just an uncomfortable day.”

Auburn’s spring game is scheduled to take place at 1 p.m. CT on Saturday, April 8. In the end, Hugh Freeze hopes the day provides momentum and understanding of where Auburn football currently stands, and where it’s headed.

“I want our fans to be excited about the momentum we’ve created here,” Freeze said. “Do we have a ways to go? Yes. But that doesn’t mean we can’t be excited about where we are currently. Somehow I’ve got to figure out a way that I want all of those things to occur, and that’s not easy.”