Auburn Tigers head coach Hugh Freeze finds himself firmly on the hot seat going into his third season on The Plains.

With kickoff just weeks away, Freeze is stressing urgency and consistency to his players during preseason practice.

During a post-practice press conference this week, Freeze was extremely candid when assessing his team’s performance and how they looked on that particular day:

“If you’re only excellent when people are watching, it’s really not excellence. It’s just performing.” – Auburn HC Hugh Freeze on his disappointment with the effort at Wednesday’s practice pic.twitter.com/YgyRqoGXJr

— The Next Round (@NextRoundLive) August 6, 2025

“You would think we would have a little more energy, I would hope,” Freeze said. “I told [the team] just a while ago, if you’re only excellent when people are watching, it’s really not excellence. It’s just performing. There were spurts of practice that were really good and others that I thought we kinda just got through. So we’ve gotta improve that and make sure that every rep, every day must be stacked in order to win these competitive close games that we’re gonna be in.”

Freeze has the quarterback situation finally settled with Oklahoma transfer Jackson Arnold, and he is going to be a huge factor in determining what the ceiling of this team is.

If Freeze cannot get the squad to a place where they’re attacking every rep the way he wants to see though, it’s not a great sign heading into the year.

With still a few weeks to go until kickoff time, perhaps the Tigers can buckle down and build some momentum back up in their search to right the ship at Auburn.