This year, Auburn football started fall training earlier than usual on July 29. The team’s August 29th first game against Baylor is the reason for the early start.
Hugh Freeze, the coach of Auburn, described on Wednesday how the Tigers’ camp schedule has been drastically altered by the early kickoff against the Bears.
Usually, Saturday is the day for scrimmages, while Sunday is the day off. Freeze stated, “It’s exactly flipped for us through camp.” When the season arrives, the typical week will be Sunday through Friday, so Friday will be those days and Saturday will be the off days. Thus, the entire camp is built for that purpose.
Freeze said that the team’s mentality has improved as a result of the spring and summer preparations before the Tigers formally started practice on Tuesday.
“This is the most excited I’ve been for a fall camp in recent memory,” Freeze stated in his opening remarks.
I believe that since February, we have done everything we possibly could. Even back in February, we were given a portion of the eight hours to spend 30 minutes here and there with our team by Dom [Studzinski], our strength and conditioning coach. That seems to have paid off. “We aren’t trying to do too much,” Freeze continued, “and we stayed really consistent.”
The same coordinators and a few position coaches from the previous campaign are back at Auburn for this one.
Freeze feels at ease with his team’s position and thinks they’ll take things up quickly because everything is so familiar.
Both parties are, I believe, in their second year of the same arrangement, which has been advantageous, especially for those small children. Freeze went on, “We haven’t had to change things on kids.” The discussion, the people, and the language are all the same. We’ll find out how many assignments have been missed when we head out there today for some team activities. However, it feels like we’ve come a long way compared to previous years.
As AL.com continues to track all Tigers roster changes during fall camp, Auburn practices on Wednesday afternoon at 3:30.
For AL.com, Jerry Humphrey III reports on Auburn athletics. You can email him at JHumphreyIII@al.com or follow him on X at @Jerryhump3.
