Auburn's Hugh Freeze Killing them with Kindness

Auburn Tigers head coach Hugh Freeze will need much more than flattery to get one over his old friend, Eli Drinkwitz.

Auburn Tigers head coach Hugh Freeze has been full of praise for Missouri Tigers head coach Eli Drinkwitz. / Jake Crandall/ Advertiser / USA TODAY NETWORK

Auburn Tigers head coach Hugh Freeze would appear to be taking the approach that degrees of flattery might help him get one over his old friend Eli Drinkwitz. 

“I know everybody has their rankings of coaches, and the better talent you have, the better coach you are, for sure. To me, some of the better coaching jobs are done with some of those lesser rosters in recruiting," Freeze declared during the week.

"And you look at people like Eli (Drinkwitz) and (Mark) Stoops, and Clark Lea now, too, that I think are doing incredible jobs at their respective programs with the kids they’ve had. They’ve had some time to develop their culture and get their players in. But Eli, I think he does one of the better jobs in the country in all aspects in managing the new world that we’re facing."

You could say at this fork in the road moment of Auburn’s season, any advantage is going to be grabbed by Freeze, no matter how innocent it might appear.

Heading into today's matchup against the 5-1 Missouri Tigers, Freeze is suddenly on a different trajectory from that of former Auburn assistant Drinkwitz.

Missouri has also had a firm commitment to running the ball with authority, and that similarly brushes coarsely against how Freeze has underutilized the abilities of star running back Jarquez Hunter in particular. 

On rumbles the mysterious quest to finally discover the key to playing the most basic form of complimentary football, and as we all know, somehow avoiding turnovers has proven elusive thus far.

Auburn fans have heard pretty much every excuse in the book this season already, so it was probably long overdue that Freeze would inevitably roll out the "self scouting" soundbite during the bye week.

“Self scouting, honestly, was about as good as it’s ever been," Freeze insisted. "The balance and the unpredictability of formations, it’s pretty good. Obviously, our quarterbacks have, I think Payton (Thorne) has played well at times and we’ve struggled at times. It’s there for everybody to see, but I think as of late he’s played really consistent and we’re going to need that the next few weeks, for sure, to be able to compete against these teams we’re going in to play.”

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

“The thing that’s been good is having time. Today, we have most of the game plan in because we obviously started last week," Freeze said. "Now it’s, ‘are we really, really sure from everybody in this room that you feel really, really good about your kids executing this against all these different looks that we may or may not see on this given play.’ Particularly on these critical down calls. Just having the time to just really go back and watch it again. Let’s go back and watch it again for the third time this morning on three different films."

Freeze has played nice with Drinkwitz all week, but expect the niceties to come to an end quickly. There’s a lot on the line when the Tigers and Tigers kickoff at 11 a.m. CT on ESPN.