Auburn football head coach Hugh Freeze didn’t pull punches when assessing the Tigers’ 2023 quarterback room at the Alabama Football Coaches Association’s annual clinic on January 27 in Montgomery.
Right now, the Tigers have three quarterbacks in the room with Class of 2023 Hank Brown joining the team for fall practice. T.J. Finley could be waiting for the next transfer window, though he’s still on the depth chart as of now. Truthfully, Freeze’s comments seem levied at incumbent starter Robby Ashford and Holden Geriner, whose sole redshirt season was amidst coaching chaos.
This was Freeze’s brutally honest critique of the QB room (h/t Auburn Observer):
"“I think that room’s got to grow up. I think they’ve got to grow up and decide if they truly want to be a quarterback. And if so, then they’re going to have to take hard coaching from me. I coach that spot really, really hard. But I’ve been honest with them and told them that.”“It’s not personal, it’s not anything (like that). But when I watched the tapes from last year, I see that we’ve got to grow up in that room and understand what it means to be an SEC quarterback at a place like Auburn.”"
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Freeze’s wording about deciding whether they want to be a quarterback seems especially directed at Robby Ashford, who oftentimes outrushed his passing yardage numbers in the latter half of the 2022 season. Still, the messaging to everyone in the room revolved around becoming more of a capable pocket passer in order to look the part of a top flight SEC quarterback.
Freeze went out and recruited three new starters from the transfer portal on the offensive line, not to mention brought on Class of 2023 trench recruits who could potentially push for snaps this season as well. It’ll be on the Tigers arms already on campus to prove capable of running an up-tempo offense with big-play potential. On the ground with a deep running back room and through the air.
Otherwise, Freeze could be partial to the big-armed Hank Brown, who the head coach recruited at both Liberty and Auburn, when he arrives on the Plains this summer.