Hugh Freeze’s strong message on how he needs to act at Auburn practice

Hugh Freeze revealed to reporters on August 19 the demeanor he must display at Auburn football practice — claiming that he’s going to need to be a “practice jerk” in order to have his message resonate with his players.

“I think every DNA of every team I’ve coached is a little different and every staff is a little different,” said Freeze (h/t Rivals). “Truthfully, the last four years, I haven’t had to be, how should I say it, the practice jerk. But I’ve kind of found out I need to be that here, and calling people out. I like to refer to it as calling people up. But I think I’m needed to do that here. I’m figuring out the coaches too and what I need to do to motivate our team. That’s probably the biggest thing.”

At Liberty, Freeze very rarely had the caliber of athlete that he is currently encountering on the Plains. Especially considering much of his roster came from the transfer portal, Freeze is managing a host of different experience levels with varying levels of achievement on everyone’s resume.

Hugh Freeze takes credit for improved Auburn football practice

From the sound of it, Freeze is coming into his own as the head coach of the Tigers. The Auburn football lead locker room voice took credit for improved practices from the first scrimmage; one he heavily criticized.

“I thought we had better practices this week because I chose to take the lead on, ‘This is how we’re going to do it,'” Freeze prefaced before saying, “I thought we got better.”

Freeze was higher on the secondary than he was on the guys up front when breaking down in greater detail where his team, specifically the defense, was doing.

“I thought our DB’s got a little bit better at tackling, at guarding,” said Freeze. “We’re still struggling to get off blocks in the front six some with our front and our linebackers. We’ve got to continue to work on that and improve it.”