This is an opinion column.

Full disclosure here: This column space hasn’t been one for Hugh Freeze cheerleading.

In fact, we’ve been quite critical.

More than once. Or twice.

A new day dawned Tuesday, however, as Auburn arrived for its turn at SEC Media Days in Atlanta.

Most, but not all, of the loser talk that’s seeped into the offseason news cycles washed away when Hugh Freeze stepped to his pulpit.

Some of the confidence and swagger that Auburn hired on was on display.

So, credit earned. Credit given.

“I truly believe that in the playoff run,” Freeze said Tuesday, “we’re going to be in this discussion because I love this team.”

That’s a big improvement over the “got to make a bowl game” line from May.

It’s a step up from the lukewarm enthusiasm that followed a fourth straight 7-loss season.

While preseason expectations run the gamut for Year 3 of Freeze, hearing some full-chested confidence from the head guy is refreshing.

There won’t be many outside of the Auburn football complex connecting the Tigers with playoff talk so having a coach unafraid to go there in such a public setting has to resonate with both the locker room and a hungry fanbase.

This team is coming off a 5-7 season but is growing into a few top-10 recruiting classes.

It has a former 5-star QB who transferred from Oklahoma in Jackson Arnold, who is symbolic of the program as a whole.

High expectations.

Unrealized potential.

High ceiling.

Yet still a mystery due to disappointing results to date.

All of that adds to being picked to finish 12 of 16 SEC teams in AL.com’s annual preseason poll.

Midpack is a fair expectation for the full media preseason poll the league is conducting this week at media days.

Still, Freeze isn’t afraid to talk playoff for a program that hasn’t played a meaningful bowl game since 2017.

“Our expectation is we embrace the high expectations that Auburn brings,” Freeze said, “and we believe this team’s potential is limitless.”

And he’s not downplaying the importance of the season opener Auburn will play at Baylor.

There is zero hiding from the fact that that first game is a big game, and we must embrace that too,” Freeze said. “That should help elevate our focus all throughout our fall camp because we’re playing a very good football team.”

Maybe we’re too deep into analyzing the impact of sentences spoken by football coaches, but this is more like the spirit you want to hear from a coach in Freeze’s position. It’s not the rah-rah, manufactured tag-line stuff that’s seeped into coaching vocabulary.

Just old-fashioned confidence — the kind this success-starved program could use.

Now, some of the old talk surfaced again Tuesday. In the same breath and sentence following the playoff line, Freeze regressed a little.

“Now, we’ve got to stay healthy and we need the ball to bounce our way a couple times this year instead of against us,” Freeze said. “I’m sure, but that’s our full expectation.”

Kinda simplifying things. But OK.

“We should have won or could have won some games last year,” he said going back to a greatest hit before recovering. “And we’ve done everything in our power to evaluate why that happened and what we can do better as coaches and then get more pieces to the puzzle with more and more players.”

Listen, they’re all just words at this point.

Everyone is close to talked out and we’ve almost reached a breaking point in finding meaning in these comments.

It will be about actions starting Aug. 29 when Auburn kicks off against Baylor in Waco.

This isn’t playoff or bust for this Auburn team, but a quantifiable improvement should be a minimum expectation for a program that deserves better than 5-7.

But Freeze on Tuesday sounded like the winner Auburn hired in November 2022.

Credit where credit is due.

Michael Casagrande is a reporter for the Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter @ByCasagrande or on Facebook.