After virtually every poor Auburn passing performance, head coach Hugh Freeze has blamed a larger scope of problems than just the quarterback. He’s blamed coaching not being good enough, players lined up in the wrong places, incorrect protection schemes and failure to run the right route.

Auburn is going into its seventh game and still hasn’t worked out these kinks.

“It’s one thing to go out there and say, hey, I know we can throw a post route,” Freeze said Monday. “Well, great. Who is going to run that post route, and is he gonna run it correctly, and is he able, athletically, to beat this corner if that matchup is there? Who is gonna throw it? Are we good enough to do that and win the game? If we are, we’ve gotta figure out exactly who those people are. We’re having a lot of discussions that go into certain plays, truthfully, that I haven’t had a lot of.”

Auburn’s total offense is ranked 100 out of 130 teams. Its passing offense is among the nation’s 10 worst. Auburn is last in the SEC in scoring offense, last in the league for yards per completion and second to last in third down conversion rate. Auburn hadn’t thrown for 100 yards against a Power 5 opponent until last weekend’s 48-18 loss to LSU.

Freeze has said these recurring faults would be addressed in previous practices, addressed in the bye week and once again addressed this week before Auburn plays Ole Miss at 6 p.m. Saturday in Jordan-Hare Stadium.

He and Auburn players have both said they’ve felt the team has practiced well overall, but that isn’t translating over to games. Left tackle Dillon Wade suggested the struggles Auburn has had weren’t entirely surprising.

“Some of the things have shown up in practice,” Wade said Tuesday. “I didn’t think they were going to be as big of a disadvantage as they were. I’m not going to say I can see the future, but it was kind of apparent things were going to happen.”

Part of the problem, players believe, has been the process of learning an entirely new scheme and playbook quickly during fall camp and doing so with at least 40 new players on this roster.

Wade said not being on the same page as the rest of his offensive line — which is currently starting four transfers — has led to the protection issues.

Tight end Rivaldo Fairweather said to unlock the passing offense, Auburn receivers need to run the right routes and trust the coaches. He said the pass catchers don’t all understand how to adjust their routes against certain coverage types. But now in Week 8, Fairweather said while he’s surprised the offense has struggled this much, he believes Auburn is close to figuring things out.

“It’s not a difficult playbook to learn,” Fairweather said. “It’s pretty easy. We all just have to spend more time studying, watching film and stuff. Knowing when to do stuff versus certain coverages and stuff. But like I said, this is the week where we really got to show the world we have a passing offense, and I believe we will.”

None of these fixes are drastic changes, nor does Freeze have any plans make a larger change. But he is considering slightly altering his scheme.

Freeze has found his way to two SEC head jobs based on his previous successes as an offensive-minded coach. He did that with his run-pass-option style and playing at a high pace.

Auburn ran a bit of that up-tempo style Freeze likes toward the end of the LSU loss, and found some success passing the ball with quarterback Payton Thorne in that stretch.

The problem here lies in Freeze doesn’t feel he has the personnel to run that for a whole game. He also believes it would leave his defense out on the field for far too many plays per game.

So while tempo may be what he wants, he isn’t sure he can do it. It’s conundrum after connundrum.

“So it’s a very uncomfortable feeling for me to not be in that world,” Freeze said. “it’s not working right now the whole other way, either. It’s a struggle if you say hey, let’s just go fast and see if we can do that. Then you’re asking Marcus Harris to play 80 snaps a game because of just depth issues. Not just Marcus but other defensive linemen. I’m not sure that’s smart either. We’re still kind of debating that and whether that’s the right approach.”

Matt Cohen covers Auburn sports for AL.com. You can follow him on Twitter at @Matt_Cohen_ or email him at [email protected]