After a notable staff shakeup within Auburn’s football program, head coach Hugh Freeze finally broke his silence Friday afternoon during an appearance at the Alabama Football Coaches Association Convention in Montgomery.

Caught in the lobby of the Embassy Suites hotel by WSFA 12′s Seth Carpenter, Freeze offered up a few words about Auburn’s offseason full of staff changes, first addressing his decision to bring aboard former Ole Miss associate head coach and wide receivers coach Derrick Nix as Auburn’s next offensive coordinator and running backs coach.

“My history with D-Nix goes back to our Ole Miss days,” Freeze said. “He’s an incredible man, No. 1, and he’s an incredible recruiter. Excited about having someone who knows our system to be able to add great value to our offense.”

Freeze and Nix previously worked together at Ole Miss, where Nix served as the Rebels’ running backs coach throughout Freeze’s five-year tenure in Oxford.

The hiring of Nix was announced on Jan. 17, just six days after the shocking resignation of former Auburn associate head coach and running backs coach Cadillac Williams, and 12 days after Freeze announced he wouldn’t be retaining offensive coordinator Philip Montgomery.

And considering part of Montgomery’s role was overseeing Auburn’s quarterbacks, Freeze also needed to locate a quarterback coach to fill the void. Fortunately for Freeze, he didn’t need to look far as he went on to elevate Kent Austin from assistant to the head coach/quality control to quarterbacks coach.

News of Austin’s promotion came at the same time of Nix’s hiring.

“Kent’s the best quarterbacks coach I’ve ever been around,” Freeze said Friday. “Fundamentally, execution, coverage recognition and obviously a great comfort level having done that with him for four years at Liberty.”

Austin served as co-offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach during Freeze’s entire four-year tenure at Liberty and helped develop former Auburn quarterback Malik Willis into a third-round draft pick in the 2022 NFL Draft.

And while Freeze has made efforts to quickly fill the openings on his staff, also adding former Colorado defensive coordinator Charles Kelly as Auburn’s co-defensive coordinator, there’s still one vacancy to be filled: Auburn’s second co-defensive coordinator.

Freeze’s hunt for a second defensive coordinator comes after Ron Roberts jumped ship to Florida after serving one season as Auburn’s defensive coordinator, as well as the resignation of defensive backs coach Zac Etheridge, who recently accepted a similar role at Houston.

“Good, a lot of interest,” Freeze said Friday when asked how the search has been going. “Difficult decision, need to get it right and still working through that.”