Despite not having a perfect day against South Alabama, Auburn head coach Hugh Freeze liked how balanced his team was on the offensive side of the ball.
Freeze was particularly pleased with the length of drives the Tigers managed to put together.
"I think I'm really pleased," Freeze said. "Offensively, we had eight possessions. That was it. We had scoring drives on a 12-play, a 14-play and a 16-play. We scored five of our first six drives, and we only had eight for the whole game. One of those was victory. So, yeah, there were some things that we could improve on. I was probably a bit conservative up two scores in trying to use some clock. But I thought there were a lot of good things that happened offensively, particularly early on in the game."
One offensive unit Freeze liked what he saw from was the offensive line. Despite everything that was thrown at it, it responded and provided protection.
"I thought all the different looks you got from that crew, they handled it well—particularly in the running game," Freeze said. "The first few drives, I thought the pocket was clean, too, for him to be able to go through his progressions and throw good balls. I thought the o-line played solid."
Despite still being a work in progress, Freeze is confident the unit is on the right track and is getting closer to being a competitive SEC unit.
"I think we're still learning about us," Freeze said. We've got things you look at and try to improve. I did, like I said, early on in the game, we could throw or run and protect and go through progressions and give our receivers chances to win routes. Obviously, we felt like we could run the ball, too. I hadn't seen the stats. We have to be close to being fairly balanced. Yeah. I think we've got to just continue to work on protection, route understanding and Jackson making sure what the coverage is when certain routes are called. We'll continue to work on that next week."
Freeze and Auburn's offense will hope to show more improvement in its SEC opener against Oklahoma next week. Kickoff is set for 2:30 and ABC will carry the broadcast.