Auburn head coach Hugh Freeze is taking a unique approach to evaluating players and assessing how he wants to coach them.

The third-year Tigers coach revealed at SEC Media Days that he and the team took personality tests, which helped him and the players learn more about themselves.

“It helped me a lot understand how Jackson [Arnold] and Deuce [Knight] and Ashton [Daniels], how do they need to be coached by me,” Freeze said. “I can be that Michael Jordan side of, ‘you gotta get this right. Why didn’t you get it right?’ Instead, I probably need to be more of the Scottie Pippen sometimes.”

Freeze said the tests have helped him communicate with all the different types of players on the team. The results allowed him to group the players into different categories that would influence how Freeze coaches and communicates with them.

For a player like Arnold, Freeze found understanding his personality to be important in an effort to instill confidence in him after a shaky 2024 season at Oklahoma. So far, Freeze believes that effort is working.

“I feel really good about that right now,” Freeze said. “Ultimately, I don’t think there’s any way you’re going to really judge it until we hit the field, but he’s got the swagger right now and the respect of this football team and a great understanding of our offense.”

Not only are the tests a way for Freeze and the staff to assess the current roster and how to coach them, they’ve become a tool to evaluate potential transfers.

Arnold said he took one when he was on his visit at Auburn, adding that he liked the idea for coaching.

“He wants to see what personalities fit him and his coaching style,” Arnold said. “If that fit’s not good, then don’t grab that guy out of the portal. I completely understand him doing it.”

Freeze said he likes using the tests for players they recruit out of the portal. He described the portal recruiting process as speed dating, with a decision sometimes having to be made within 24 hours.

It’s not as important for high school recruits, Freeze said, but he still gives those players the option of taking it.

“It’s not as important because you’re going to have time when they get there,” Freeze said, “And you’ve had a window of a year or two that you kind of have an idea of knowing them.”

Auburn signed 19 transfers this offseason, meaning the reliability of those tests could be determined on the field this season. While it’s hard to tell how those personalities will work in a game until it’s time to take the field, Freeze is confident in the approach.

“My first thought today when I saw Jackson was, ‘say to him this,’” Freeze said. “That really comes from just the discussions that we’ve had with people over these profiles, which I think are going to be very helpful to us.”

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