The work has been nonstop for Hugh Freeze since he took over as Auburn’s head coach at the end of November, and there will be little time to breathe before the start of spring practice, either.

Freeze and his staff have endured a whirlwind two months on the job, and now they face a time crunch with spring practices less than four weeks away. Auburn’s first day of spring ball is set for Feb. 27, ultimately leading to the A-Day spring game on April 8 at Jordan-Hare Stadium.

“It’s not an ideal calendar for us in Year 1,” Freeze said Thursday. “With the new world, I don’t feel like we really had a Christmas or a New Year’s or anything, but it’s part of taking over a new job and the transition of it.”

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Fortunately for Freeze and the rest of Auburn’s coaches, there’s a small reprieve this month before the start of spring practices due to February being a dead period for recruiting, meaning coaches cannot have any in-person contact with recruits or their parents, though electronic communication is still permitted during this time. So, the recruiting aspect hasn’t stopped for Auburn’s coaches, but they’re at least off the road and back inside the program’s new football complex this month as they turn their attention to spring practices.

That doesn’t mean things have slowed down for the new staff.

“Typically, you would like to take a little breather right now, but we’re not afforded that opportunity,” Freeze said. “We’ve got to really hustle in February to get everything installed. I mean, we’re all coming from a plethora of backgrounds, and this is the first week that we’ve really sat down and said, ‘Hey, what are we calling this? And how high up on the hierarchy of install is it? Is this something we believe in strong enough to focus on it in spring ball?’ So, we’ve got thousands of discussions that have got to take place between now and the 27th of February.”

Those discussions began in earnest on Wednesday, after Freeze returned from a stop in Mobile to check in on Senior Bowl practice, where former Auburn standouts Derick Hall and Eku Leota are showcasing their talents for NFL personnel. As Freeze put it, Wednesday was the first day since he was named Auburn’s head coach that was just a full day dedicated to X’s and O’s.

During that first day of meetings, Freeze said, he and offensive coordinator Philip Montgomery and the rest of the offensive staff worked through protections. Thursday afternoon’s scheduled meetings were focused on the screen game as the staff settles on its offensive and defensive systems ahead of the first day of practices at the end of the month.

“We’ve got a long way to go,” Freeze said. “…We’ve got a full month of February facing us.”

As far as the goals for Auburn’s first spring under his watch, Freeze is keeping it simple, saing he wants the Tigers to just “get good at something.” Offensively, the focus will be largely on the quarterbacks—what they can and can’t do, how they can progress from where they were last season, and how Freeze and Montgomery can adapt their scheme to the quarterbacks’ strengths. Defensively, he wants to see good effort, physicality and an ability to tackle well and force turnovers.

“We’ve got plenty of time in fall camp, in the week, for a gameplan, to add some of this auxiliary stuff in if we think that’s going to help us win a game,” Freeze said. “But truthfully, what can we do on offense that we feel our personnel can do that we currently have?… (Defensively), I don’t care if we get two fronts in. Let’s get all those things down and go get the ball and take the ball away. Those will be my focus. I’m not real caught up.

“I told them this morning in staff (meetings), I don’t care if we just have three install days and the rest are just us getting better at those three things that we installed on those days. I really could (not) care less how much we get in.”

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