Last season wasn't a very good one for Hugh Freeze and the Auburn football team. The Tigers finished the regular season with a 6-6 record, and then went on to lose 31-13 against Maryland in the Music City Bowl to finish 6-7. It wasn't a good year for Auburn, and Freeze thinks some of the issues were because of him giving up offensive play calling duties.
“I don't mean this to say I'm some offensive guru or anything,” Hugh Freeze said on Thursday, according to an article from ESPN. “But I felt like I took one of my strengths off the table.”
Instead of Freeze, offensive coordinator Philip Montgomery was in charge of the play calling duties, and the Auburn football team struggled on offense all year long, averaging just over 26 PPG. Montgomery was fired after the season. The whole experience last year made Freeze a bit uncomfortable.
“For the first time ever, [I] let somebody else design it — and I'm sure they're really good at it — but it was so dang uncomfortable for me that it affected the confidence of the kids and the chemistry,” Freeze said. “… Just knew I couldn't go another year and I didn't think we had the answers [quarterback] Payton [Thorne] needed. That was troublesome to me.”
Expect Freeze to be much more involved with the play calling this season, but he isn't going to be the only one doing it.
“I'm not saying I'm calling it all,” Freeze said. “Nix (new offensive coordinator Derrick Nix) knows it. But I know I can, and that gives me a comfort level, ‘All right, we're struggling, let me have this for a minute. I know what I want to do,' and a head coach has that priority to do that.”
Payton Thorne is excited for this year's Hugh Freeze offense
Auburn football quarterback Payton Thorne was put into some tough spots last year where he wasn't able to communicate with Freeze. He is excited for the way that the offense will look this season.
“I don't even want to talk about that,” Payton Thorne said in regard some of last year's issues. “It wasn't Coach Freeze's offense last year. Now that it is his offense, it's going to be a lot more fun.”
Thorne seems a lot more confident with this offense than he did with last year's version. It sounds like Hugh Freeze has his team fully on board and bought in with what will be happening on that side of the football.
“We're going to know what we're doing and why we're doing it,” Thorne continued. “We're going to know this is where you're supposed to be. This is when you're supposed to be there. This is how you're supposed to get there. This is where your eyes are supposed to be at quarterback. … All that stuff is winning football. That's how you are good on offense. And those are going to be the things that we're doing this year, and I'm going to play fast, too. So this is going to be a much more efficient offense, a much more detailed offense. So I'm really excited about that.”
If Auburn football wants to have a better season this year, their offense will definitely need to take some strides. It sounds like they have the right things in place for that to happen.
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