Before he’d ever coached a game at Auburn, before he’d been through a single fall camp practice, before he’d landed the commitments of top prospects like five-star receivers Perry Thompson or Cam Coleman, head coach Hugh Freeze stood on at a podium in July at the Grand Hyatt hotel in Nashville to say he was giving up playcalling duties all in an effort to focus on recruiting.

On that afternoon at SEC Media Days, Freeze said he was giving up playcalling duties to offensive coordinator Philip Montgomery because he no longer felt he was the elite play-caller he used to be. But leading up to Auburn’s Sept. 30 game against Georgia, Freeze said in reality the decision would be more so to allow him time to be on the road, to be calling recruits and to be game-planning for years to come instead of just the week ahead.

His belief centered on an understanding that what he needed to make Auburn competitive within in the SEC wasn’t on the team’s 2023 roster. Throughout the season, Freeze has talked about the team’s so-called talent gap to the rest of the SEC. So he focused instead on building for years to come.

The first season of that choice culminated Wednesday with National Signing Day. Auburn signed 25 total players on Wednesday in a class that is now ranked No. 7 nationally, according to 247Sports.

“So, I think the time I chose to maybe spend away from the offensive side of the ball, it paid some dividends there,” Freeze said Wednesday.

Freeze spending time outside of the gritty game-planning details allowed him to bring in the best wide receiver class in Auburn’s history with five-star recruits Thompson and Coleman as well as four-star recruits Malcolm Simmons and Bryce Cain.

“I think I couldn’t have asked any more out of the effort that it took to try, in a short amount of time, to get into the battles for the top guys,” Freeze said. “Because truthfully the elite schools are always a couple years ahead. We had to close the gap on a lot to get in in those battles. We didn’t win all of them but we sure were in them.”

The 2024 class is Auburn’s first top-10 group since 2020. It’s the first Auburn class to contain a five-star recruit since linebacker Owen Pappoe in 2019.

“I thought the effort that was put into trying to make our first class here a top-10 class, which was our goal— I don’t know where we stand with that, I can’t keep up with all of that,” Freeze said. “That was our goal, is in Year One to have a top-10 class and in Year Two to have a top-five class.”

Though the belief Freeze seemed to have at the beginning of the season — to serve as somewhat of a CEO while tending to all the necessary parts of rebuilding Auburn — isn’t exactly what came to fruition.

Freeze’s appearance ahead of the Georgia game on Auburn’s weekly Tiger Talk radio show laid out his dilemma. By that point in the season, Auburn was 3-1 but had clearly shown its struggles offensively — especially as that week Auburn was coming off a 27-10 loss to Texas A&M where the only touchdown Auburn scored came from linebacker Eugene Asante returning a fumble.

On the show, Freeze said he was having to take on a larger role with the play-calling and the offense as a whole. As the season went on, Freeze talked frequently about how difficult it was for him to not be as hands-on as he’s been in the past. This was the first season where Freeze has been a head coach while also not serving as the primary play-caller on offense.

But in order to help with the struggling offense of the 2023 season, that meant Freeze could no longer spend as much time in recruiting. Auburn had dozens of recruits on campus the week of the Georgia game — just as it did in home games later in the season against Ole Miss and Alabama.

And after Auburn lost to Ole Miss, dropping to 3-4 for the season with an anemic offense, Freeze had to make a change. Three weeks later, Auburn then on a three-game winning streak, Freeze sat down after his 48-10 win over Arkansas and described how after the Ole Miss game, he came into the offensive staff meetings and firmly stated they were going to play the game his way. No questions about it.

“We had a dang chance to win a few other games, and I wish I had put my foot down earlier and said, ‘This is the only thing I feel comfortable being able to help. If we operate like this, I can help,’” Freeze said after beating Arkansas. “And that’s probably the turning point.”

That meant adding in more of the run-pass-option and high-tempo schemes Freeze has pushed for. And when that change occurred, Auburn’s offense began its best run of play for the whole season.

Albeit, the passing offense still finished as the worst in the SEC. That’s why Freeze needed wide receivers. He believes adding talent like Thompson and Coleman around quarterback Payton Thorne will be that solution.

Whether his added playcalling involvement cost Auburn any recruiting battles isn’t clear. It would certainly be a stretch to suggest Auburn only landed one of its three top flip targets on Signing Day because Freeze spent more time working on the game-planning and play-calling as the year progressed.

And what Freeze’s role next year could look like is unclear. Montgomery is still the offensive coordinator and, to this point, nothing concrete has suggested Auburn plans to cut ties.

Montgomery will be made available to the media on the eve of the Music City Bowl in Nashville. That will be the first time for any clarity surrounding exactly what his role looked like once Freeze became more involved.

It’s now on Freeze to determine what he wants his involvement to look like, and how to balance his time, going forward.

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