Hugh Freeze ‘pleased’ with practice effort, remains cautious when balancing health, intensity

AUBURN — Hugh Freeze said he wanted his team to look sharp when preseason camp started. After six practices and heading into a light scrimmage on Saturday, Freeze says he’s mostly happy with how things have gone.

“Really pleased honestly, which is shocking to me,” Freeze said on Friday. “But, I mean, when I say really pleased, there’s a lot of back and forth. That’s probably a good thing to see how each side responds. It’s been a little inconsistent in special teams, which was disappointing. I think we’ll get that fixed and be okay.

“But offensively, defensively, it’s meant to be back and forth, and I think our kids are gaining an understanding of both schemes and making the checks and adjustments that we need to. I’m pretty pleased.”

Freeze did mention an early concern, as he hopes to keep his players healthy, while creating intense competition.

“The effort has been great. It’s been a little too chippy and unprotective a couple days, and I don’t know exactly how to balance that,” Freeze said. “I guess you can go the route of not having a lot of contact, but I just don’t know that you can win in this league without having some physical practices in camp.

“It scares me to death, truthfully, because we need to stay healthy. We’re not that deep in places, so we’ve stressed that heavily the last three days of trying to practice cleaner without people on the ground, and it has gotten a little better.

“But we had two days in a row where some really scary things when you watch the film that easily could have hurt somebody. I think everybody’s dealing with that to a certain extent, and me just trying to figure out exactly how to approach that, particularly with two scrimmages coming up. It’s not the easiest thing. I don’t know that I have the answer.”

One such instance was receiver KeAndre Lambert-Smith going down for a catch last week earlier this week and getting rolled up on, injuring his ankle. Lambert-Smith was seen with heavy tape on his right ankle, fortunately, but it could have been worse.

All that leads into Saturday’s practice, which is supposed to include a light scrimmage. Freeze is unsure how the practice will be structured, but admits scrimmaging and tackling to the ground are necessary evils heading into the season.

“We sure need to tackle some. But then, I’m not on my phone all day pretty much and then I open up the Twitter, X, whatever you call it and see that the team in our conference lost a starting tailback, and it just keeps you up at night,” Freeze said.

Freeze is referring to Texas running back CJ Baxter being injured and lost for the season earlier this week.

Freeze continued, “not all the scrimmage will be live, but my plan currently is yes, there will be a portion of thud and then a portion of live and in a portion of live there are probably a few people that don’t participate in it.”

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