Auburn football head coach Hugh Freeze discussed some injuries and the health status of his team toward the end of the second week of fall camp. A few wide receivers for the Tigers have been banged up and will likely wear yellow jerseys for their upcoming scrimmage.
In particular, Hugh Freeze named-dropped Malcolm Simmons, Eric Singleton Jr., Perry Thompson and Bryce Cain. However, he assured that they’re fine.
“It’s nothing real serious. Eric probably has the one that would take the longest to recover. Just a really deep thigh bruise. I think the others could be ready by Monday.”
This is a position group that, on paper, has the most depth on the team, so injuries aren’t the end of the world. But having a staggering number of five receivers out is not something you want to continue to trend toward.
Freeze also understands the importance of having contact and physicality in practice when playing in the SEC.
“That’s the toughest thing,” Freeze stated while shaking his head in disappointment. “How do you prepare a team in a very physical league to be physical, and be healthy and fresh at the same time. In camp, there is just no way around it. We’re on two weeks now and you just have those bumps and bruises. And we’re fortunate that nothing is to the point where we’ve lost someone for significant time.”
Leading into his next point, Freeze talked about the upcoming scrimmage for the Tigers on Saturday. “We will go some live, there will be some yellow jerseys on some that are not live. But it will be a mixture of live and not and just hopefully see our execution improve… But we need to see our offense on the critical downs, we weren’t great last year. And we’ve got to make sure that it is not us that is causing it not to be successful. If the defense made a great play, that’s great, but did we execute it properly, and was it schematically the right call for those critical downs?”
Freeze has grown displeased with the lack of consistency from the offense, even slamming his visor and briefly grilling quarterback Jackson Arnold at yesterday’s practice.
“We got him wide open, and we don’t throw the touchdown, and that is frustrating as heck.”
Despite Freeze asking defensive coordinator DJ Durkin to take it easy on Jackson Arnold, he has still struggled to find consistency, which, hopefully for Auburn, will only be a training camp problem and not a mid-campaign problem.
Auburn will scrimmage for the second time this training camp on Saturday, and Freeze wants to see a spark out of his offense.
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