Auburn football HC Hugh Freeze calls Iron Bowl prep week ‘a war’

It was a tough weekend for the Auburn football program. What was supposed to be an opportunity for tune-ups before the Iron Bowl turned into a historic loss for the Tigers to New Mexico State. After so much upward momentum has been destroyed, the program will have to pick up the pieces ahead of rivalry week.

Head coach Hugh Freeze said that there was ‘nothing positive’ about last weekend’s matchup with NMSU, and that kind of loss after the domination of the Arkansas game was ‘humbling.’ It was a frustrating performance where the Tigers could not make any adjustments or respond to what the Aggies were doing in any way.

The Auburn football program will now be turning their attention to the biggest game of the season: The Iron Bowl. But it’s not a normal week of game preparation. The game falls during the week of Thanksgiving, when there are no classes and the students are on a break. Per AL.com, Freeze isn’t sure yet if his team has what it takes to bounce back from the previous weekend, especially with the challenges of this week:

"Freeze said his lesson this week in his team meeting is about focus. There are many distractions this week, coming off the loss, Alabama coming, Thanksgiving. So he said this week is going to tell him a lot about his team’s focus, its competitiveness. They’ll have to be focused, he said, because this week will be “a war.”"

Although the program is in a rebuild, Freeze said there is absolutely no excuse for what took place in Jordan-Hare over the weekend, and he expects the Tigers to give their best performance this weekend against the Crimson Tide.

With the players utilizing the “24-hour rule” to move on and get in the right headspace for rivalry week, here’s hoping the home field advantage will help out the good guys this weekend.