Freeze Preaches Patience with Auburn Tigers Young Receivers

Patience is a Virtue for Auburn head coach Hugh Freeze, especially when it comes to his talented crop of next-gen receivers.

Freshman Cam Coleman was named MVP of the Auburn Tigers A-Day game. / Jake Crandall/ Advertiser / USA TODAY

So pronounced is the step up from the high school game to top level college football, as a bare minimum, many talented youngsters simply need time to acclimatize. 

Auburn Tigers head coach Hugh Freeze has successfully stockpiled lots of young talented perimeter pass catchers, and clearly that bodes extremely well for the future.

So in order to max out the next-gen potential he has on his hands, the Tigers boss is stressing how developing the likes of Cam Coleman and Perry Thompson will require the essential added element of patience.

"It's really hard to judge exactly how they will handle everything," Freeze confessed from the podium at SEC Media Days. "But it's a start with a work ethic and a maturity about your approach and don't think you have it all figured out. Be coachable. And Cam was absolutely that in the spring. He wants to be coached. He's going to play. I just -- I'm careful not to put unreal expectations on them just yet."

In essence, that's why coaches like Freeze get addicted to the process of college football - one where molding potential into productivity has only a very limited time span.

Just like the quantum leap from the amateur collegiate ranks to the professional ranks beyond, the gaping chasm simply must be bridged.

To a large extent even coach Freeze is on a voyage into the unknown, especially when the bigger, faster and stronger guys start lining up opposite his relatively inexperienced receivers.

"And so it's very hard for me to predict, you know, exactly how these young kids will perform against, you know, obviously the DBs in this league are probably the best athletes on the field when it comes to quick twitch and change of direction and all those things," Freeze admitted. "So how are they going to perform?"

Working in his favor to answer his own question is the serious array of talented receivers Freeze has worked with previously on their way to the NFL. Amongst that number you can count DK Metcalf and AJ Brown, but it was well-travelled NFL WR, Laquon Treadwell who Freeze gave a shout out to as a prime example of producing good and early in the college game.

"I've had some really great receivers," Freeze said. "And I think of Laquon Treadwell. He came in and just fit naturally. Caught 75 balls as a freshman. And obviously still in the NFL. We've signed some others that, you know, are in the NFL now but we red-shirted. They weren't quite ready."

For the moment at least, all the fame and riches of the NFL lies way off into the distance, it has to be baby steps first.