Hang around the Auburn football program long enough and you’ll hear the word “strain” a lot.

By definition, the Tigers’ buzzword means to “exert to the utmost”, according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary. And surely that’s what first-year head coach Hugh Freeze and his coaching staff wants to see out of their players as they continue to prepare for the 2023 regular season.

But in order to get players to “exert to the utmost”, Freeze and Co. must first create an environment which forces that exertion — something has been a point of emphasis on The Plains this fall.

“I know spring practice is important and going through summer training is vital and recruiting is a priority,” Freeze said in his camp-opening press conference on Aug. 3.

“But now it all kind of gets to the point where you’ve got to put all the pieces together and find out how your team handles the pressure and the heat of being strained and stressed in the great game that we all love and try to prepare yourself to compete at the best level you can for the 12 opportunities that you have.”

Auburn senior cornerback Jaylin Simpson is in the middle of his fifth fall camp with the Tigers.

He calls this year’s fall camp “a lot smoother”. One breath later, he calls the workload ” a lot harder”.

“We got pushed and strained a lot more,” Simpson said.

Ding, ding. There’s that word again.

Considering the word strain can also refer to an injury due to overuse or misuse, Simpson was quick to clarify that what Freeze has the guys doing is “good work” and it’s nothing their bodies can’t handle — even though it sometimes feels as if that’s not the case.

The pain in progress, however, has helped a team that features more than 40 new faces create chemistry.

“You’ve got to go every rep 100 percent even when you’re tired and you look over and your friend is breathing hard. You motivate each other,” said Auburn offensive lineman Dillon Wade. “You strain to finish. That’s where strain comes from. You’re giving your all. If your body’s telling you to stop, you keep going. You don’t stop. You just keep going.”

For Wade, who transferred from Tulsa in December, some of the strain has come from adjusting to the tempo of Auburn’s offense.

Though Wade played under Auburn’s offensive coordinator Philip Montgomery at Tulsa, he says the Tigers’ offense is moving a little quicker than the Golden Hurricanes and that it’s bound to give opposing defenses trouble come the fall.

“I feel like we’ll catch a bunch of defenses lacking, not able to get their calls off,” Wade said. “So we’ll catch a bunch of d-linemen just standing up.”

That sounded to be the case during Auburn’s first fall scrimmage on Saturday.

Heavy on the gas pedal, Freeze said the Tigers were able to run the ball well behind their quick-moving tempo, which first strained the defense.

“I’m all about creating adverse situations, and they struggled stopping our tempo early on, and I think we can go really fast when we want to,” Freeze said. “They struggled with that earlier. And then I called that off and wanted to see if we could execute and then the defense pretty much dominated from that point forward.”

On the other side of the line of scrimmage, the Tigers’ offense could only go full throttle for so long before the East Alabama heat did what the East Alabama heat does.

“Thought the heat got to us a little bit. It’s been a hot camp,” Freeze said. “I’m no excuse maker at all but we’ve gone several days in a row and you can tell they’re gassed a bit.”

The Auburn football team gets a much-needed day off Sunday.

Meanwhile, Freeze and his staff will likely have their eyes glued to the film from Saturday’s action, which showed plenty to be improved upon.

But Freeze isn’t hitting the panic button.

“I’m pretty pleased to this point,” Freeze said. “We’ve failed some tests in the adverse situations throughout but I’ve never had a team that didn’t.”