Auburn's Hugh Freeze kills them with kindness

Auburn Tigers head coach Hugh Freeze apparently figures a certain amount of flattery could help him outdo his old friend Eli Drinkwitz.

“I know everyone has their coaching rankings, and the more talent you have, the better you are as a coach for sure. “To me, some of the better coaching jobs are done with some of these smaller rosters in recruiting,” Freeze explained during the week.

“And you see guys like Eli (Drinkwitz) and (Mark) Stoops and now Clark Lea, who I think are doing an incredible job in their respective programs with the kids that they've gotten. They've had some time to develop their culture and engage their players. But Eli, I think he’s doing one of the better jobs in the country by any measure in terms of managing the new world we’re facing.”

You could say that at this turning point in Auburn's season, Freeze will grab any advantage, no matter how innocent it may seem.

Heading into today's game against the 5-1 Missouri Tigers, Freeze suddenly finds himself on a different path than former Auburn assistant Drinkwitz.

Missouri has also made a firm commitment to running the ball confidently, and that is similarly at odds with Freeze's underutilization of star running back Jarquez Hunter's skills in particular.

On rumbles on the mysterious search for the key to playing the most basic form of free-to-play football, and as we all know, avoiding turnovers has so far proven elusive.

Auburn fans have already heard just about every excuse there is this season, so it was probably long overdue that Freeze would inevitably come out with the “self-scouting” soundbite during the bye week.

“Honestly, self-scouting has never been better,” Freeze emphasized. “The balance and the unpredictability of the formations are pretty good. “Obviously our quarterbacks did that, I think Payton (Thorne) played well at times and we struggled at times. It's there for everyone to see, but I think he's been playing really consistently lately and we're definitely going to need that in the next few weeks to be able to keep up with the teams we're going up against.”

If we're being completely fair to Coach Freeze, he tried to check all the empty boxes during the extra days off, but what option did he really have left?

“The nice thing about it is having time. “Today we have most of the game plan done because obviously we started it last week,” Freeze said. “Now it's like, 'Are we really, really sure, for everyone in this room, that you feel really, really good about your kids using this against them?' all these different looks that we may or may not see in this piece.” Especially with these critical downcalls. I just have the time to really go back and watch it again. Let's go back and watch it for the third time this morning in three different movies.

Freeze has been playing well with Drinkwitz all week, but we can expect the pleasantries to end soon. There's a lot at stake when the Tigers and Tigers kick off at 11 a.m. CT on ESPN.