Hugh Freeze hasn’t had much time to watch film on Auburn’s 2022 season, but the little that he has seen has consisted of cutups of the Tigers’ quarterbacks, both the good and the bad.

He pulled up the clips whenever he found the time while out recruiting, which has consumed most of his first two months on the job. As focus shifts toward spring practice, which begins Feb. 27, Freeze hasn’t shied away from the elephant in the room — or, as it may be, the elephant that isn’t in the room: What will Auburn’s quarterback situation look like come fall?

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The first-year Auburn coach has been asked about the program’s quarterbacks multiple times in the last week — from an appearance at the ALFCA in Montgomery last week, where he pondered whether the Tigers’ 2023 starter was even on campus yet; to his stop in Mobile at Senior Bowl practice on Tuesday; to again Thursday while meeting with local reporters at Auburn’s new football facility. It will continue to be a pertinent subject throughout the offseason as Freeze heads into Year 1 as head coach.

“I’ll know a lot more after spring practice,” Freeze said. “Truthfully, when I watched the cutups that I’ve watched, man, it’s hard. It’s hard for me to adequately judge quarterbacks if they’re not afforded the opportunity to stand in the pocket and make reads and make different throws for a decent percentage of time. The sample size for that is pretty small if they weren’t under some type of duress, or maybe it was more of a move-the-pocket scheme.

“So, I’m anxious to get into spring and kind of see how they handle that, and then I’ll go from there with what we do in the second portal window.”

Auburn returns a trio of scholarship quarterbacks for spring practice in Robby Ashford, T.J. Finley and Holden Geriner.

Ashford started nine games last fall and ended the season as the Tigers’ starter, showing promise with his athleticism but still needing to develop as a passer. He completed 49.2 percent of his passes and had as many touchdowns (seven) as interceptions, but he also ran for 709 yards and seven scores while showing dynamic playmaking ability and toughness at the position. Finley won the starting job in fall camp and started the first three games of the season before being sidelined by a shoulder injury. He also spent time away from the team late in the season, ending the year with 431 passing yards on a 62.3 percent completion rate with one touchdown and four interceptions. Geriner redshirted while appearing in one game as a true freshman and attempting just three passes.

Auburn, which also signed 2023 three-star prospect Hank Brown, evaluated multiple quarterbacks during the first transfer window but ultimately didn’t bring one in. The Tigers were linked to Coastal Carolina star Grayson McCall before he chose to return to the Chanticleers. They hosted NC State transfer Devin Leary for a visit before he signed with Kentucky. They were also involved in Oklahoma State transfer Spencer Sanders before he landed at Ole Miss.

“We entertained a few quarterbacks, in my mind, in the first portal window, but never felt great about many,” Freeze said. “There are a couple that we did, but they didn’t pan out for whatever reason here at Auburn, and I was OK with that, honestly. I’m excited to work with the ones we have.”

Freeze hasn’t ruled out adding a quarterback during the second transfer window, which runs between May 1-15, but before deciding whether Auburn needs to bring in another player at the position—be it a starting-caliber quarterback or an experienced backup to provide depth—he wants to assess each of the Tigers’ three returning quarterbacks’ progress throughout spring practices.

Spring will provide Freeze, new offensive coordinator Philip Montgomery and offensive analyst Kent Austin with their first up-close-and-personal looks at Ashford, Finley and Geriner. They’ll be able to assess, over the course of 15 practices and through the A-Day spring game, the strengths and weaknesses of each of them. It’ll also afford the coaches an opportunity to determine the best way to build the offense around the strengths of their existing personnel.

“It’s just understanding how you can implement that,” Montgomery said. “You have to really dive down deep into each one of those quarterbacks and find out what are his strengths, what are his weaknesses and make sure we’re still working on the weaknesses, but we want to play to his strengths and to the strengths of what we have to use offensively. That’s going to take time to really — I’m not going to be able to just watch one tape and be able to pull that. It’s getting in the film room with him, it’s getting in there through our walkthroughs, then executing it on the field and all those God-given abilities our quarterbacks have, being able to use those in the way that we play.”

Montgomery and Freeze both shared Thursday what they’re looking for in the position now that they’re working in tandem at Auburn.

For Montgomery, he wants a good decision-maker who is an efficient “point guard or distributor” within the offense and who can think fast while analyzing situations in real time on the field. Freeze, who noted last week that Auburn’s current crop of quarterbacks “need to grow up and decide if they truly want to be a quarterback,” he wants to see if any of the trio can lead on the field and off it—both in terms of inspiring morale of their teammates in the locker room and in terms of not getting frazzled when something doesn’t go exactly as planned between the lines.

“We have had a plethora of different styles of quarterbacks in this offense,” Montgomery said. “We’ve had guys that have been really, really athletic that can do it all from that standpoint with their feet and then grow and develop as a passer. We’ve had guys that are really efficient as a passer and have a big arm that can make all of the throws, but their mobility is not really at that elite level.

“So, it’s about adapting what you do offensively to the talent that you have at that particular moment. I think what Coach Freeze and I have been able to do over the years is make sure our offense is flexible enough to be able to adapt to the talent that we have.”

Tom Green is an Auburn beat reporter for Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter @Tomas_Verde.