What does Auburn need to put its focus on in the bye week?

Heading into its first bye week of the regular season, Auburn football is not sitting in a comfortable spot, ending the first half of its season with a 2-4 overall record and 0-3 conference showing. Now in the midst of a massive road slate, the Tigers are in need of both rest and a change of focus.

During the weekly SEC coaches media teleconference on Wednesday, head coach Hugh Freeze, answered questions on how his squad is spending the open week, trying to give an idea as to what the focus is and how they can bounced back.

The biggest thing that Freeze has noticed through the first six weeks of the season is that the team needs to be able to execute a lot more and more consistently than it has been.

Freeze knows that his team is young, but also admits that Auburn is at the point in the season where it should be running a very smooth operation on both sides of the ball.

“You know, we can talk about how young we are and all of that. We’re six games in. But it’s our job to make sure our kids are consistent in whatever the execution of the calls are,” Freeze said. “I think it comes back to us being able to execute the given calls. And sometimes the other team wins because they have good athletes and good coaches also. But when you look at it, and we feel like the failure is because we’re not executing enough calls properly, then we’ve got to correct that somehow.”

On the other side of his team being young, a large question has resided with how the secondary is playing.

Freeze has made a point to get his young guys some time in game action to help them mature and feels optimistic about where the defense will go in the future.

“They’re really talented kids and we’re looking forward to the future with them. But we still make some freshman mistakes, for sure. But the experience they’re getting right now is invaluable,” Freeze said.

As far as what he saw from last week’s loss to Georgia, Freeze believes that the Tigers had the plan necessary to perform well, but lacked clear execution, something he is frustrated with.

“I thought our effort was good. I thought we had a good plan. I thought — we’ve got to be better coaches in demanding the execution of what we expect to use in the game plan to win the game,” Freeze said. “We can keep talking about how young we are and all of that. But at some point, we’ve got to look at ourselves and make sure we’re getting taught the exact way that it’s going to get executed. And you can show it on film that we’ve done it properly.”

Auburn looks to capitalize on the execution of its game plan over the course of this open weekend, but will need it when it takes the field next Saturday against Missouri.

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