No-Huddle Notes: Hugh Freeze opens Week 2 of Auburn camp
Energy levels, two defensive standouts, Jackson Arnold's progress and a positive injury update highlighted Wednesday's practice.
AUBURN — Hugh Freeze cut right to the chase after Wednesday’s practice.
He felt like Auburn football had “one of our best days in a long, long time” Monday before having an off day Tuesday. But, to start a three-day stretch of camp that will culminate in the first scrimmage Friday, the Tigers fell below that standard.
“You would think we would have a little more energy, I would hope,” Freeze said Wednesday. “I told them just a while ago, if you're only excellent when people are watching, it's really not excellence — it's just performing. ... There were spurts of practice that were really good, and there were others where I think we just kinda got through.
“We've got to improve that and make sure that every rep, every day must be stacked in order to win these competitive, close games that we're gonna be in.”
While Auburn will open the doors to the media again for Thursday morning’s practice, all of Wednesday’s availability was a post-practice press conference from Freeze. The head coach, who can often be blunt when talking about his team, made sure to fill in the gaps from Wednesday by giving his honest take on what happened in Practice 6.
“I thought we had one of our best days in a long, long time two days ago,” Freeze said. “Today, up and down. But still some good things.”
Freeze added that veteran coaches have seen this type of thing in preseason camps before, but “you anticipate it usually around days 8, 9, 10 — so it’s a little early for us.”
“These three days are a very physical, tough stretch,” Freeze said. “Maybe they wanted to save a little in the tank subconsciously. Excellence starts with a mindset. We’ve got to show them on the film that it wasn’t the same strain that we had a couple of days ago.”
However, as Freeze said, there were positives to take away from Wednesday’s practice. The head coach went out of his way to highlight two specific newcomers for their performances, and he had some good things to say about his starting quarterback.
Here’s a rundown of what we heard from Auburn’s head coach after the first practice of Week 2 of camp. We’ll be back Thursday afternoon with Observations from our practice viewing window and player interviews, followed by a subscribers-only podcast on Friday morning.
Continuing what has seemed to be a theme from the first week of camp, Auburn’s defense “was really dang good” against Auburn’s offense in “critical down” work. Freeze said the offense went “2 of 8” against the defense there, “which is not gonna be enough to win games.”
However, as Freeze went on to say, “it's nice to see the defense not give those up.” The Tigers were much better on defense than offense last season, so it shouldn’t be a surprise to see that continue early in camp.