Auburn football is having a uniquely short and late spring practice window in 2025.

The Tigers started practice on March 25 and will wrap up with A-Day on April 12, meaning spring ball will only last around three weeks. The reasoning is partly due to head coach Hugh Freeze’s wishes to get rid of spring practice altogether, preferring an NFL-like OTA period in the summer.

This year’s spring practice period isn’t quite that, but it’s the closest thing to the NFL model Auburn was able to have. The Tigers have already completed one full week of practice, meaning two weeks remain before the team puts the pads down until fall camp.

Freeze met with reporters during Tuesday morning’s practice, reflecting on the first week while also explaining what he still wants to see from his team before A-Day.

Auburn had its first scrimmage of spring practice last Saturday and Freeze said he was “really encouraged by the competitiveness of both sides.” The team will scrimmage again this Saturday, according to Freeze.

“I thought there were some good things. And obviously, when one side does some good things, there’s some bad things that are happening on the other that you’ve got to get corrected,” Freeze said. “But I really thought it went back-and-forth, and the competitiveness was really good to see on Saturday.”

Freeze also added that the team will finish installing this week, meaning the remainder of spring practice will be running through and maintaining what has already been put in.

Auburn added three new things before Tuesday’s practice, according to Freeze, and he thought the execution was “so-so” when the team ran through it at the beginning of the day.

“There will still be some ups and downs like there was in Tiger Ball today,” Freeze said. “That was probably as dirty as it’s been. We have really been clean in that.”

Auburn will practice four more times after it finishes installing this week, per Freeze. He explained Tuesday that the thing he’s most concerned with once that gets done is how the players are able to retain what they’ve learned and execute it in the final few practices.

“We’ll see if they can retain it and hopefully execute at a high level where your decision-making as a quarterback or a receiver with route-running or an o-lineman assignment-wise, you hope those assignments grade out high the last four times,” Freeze said. “Yes, you’ll get beat in some one-on-ones sometimes, but man, ‘he was in the right place and understood what he’s doing.’ That’s what I would love to see the last four practices. When you call something, they had a complete understanding of it.”

This year’s A-Day also won’t be the same as in years past. Rather than having a traditional spring game, Auburn will have a practice open to fans inside Jordan Hare Stadium on April 12, followed by an autograph session on the field with Freeze and Auburn’s players.

Peter Rauterkus covers Auburn sports for AL.com. You can follow him on X at @peter_rauterkus or email him at [email protected]m