Monday mornings are for truth meetings at Auburn’s Woltosz Football Performance Center — a time designated for first-year head coach Hugh Freeze to debrief his team about what he saw on film from the game prior.

The Tigers dusted the UMass Minutemen 59-14 in front of a sold out Jordan-Hare Stadium. The game saw 68 different Auburn players see the field, the Tigers win the turnover battle — including an explosive Pick 6 — and few wholesale mistakes.

Surely there were Krispy Kreme Doughnuts waiting for everyone at Monday morning’s meeting and everyone talked about the rainbows and butterflies that come with a blowout victory like Saturday’s, right?

Not quite.

While there was plenty to be happy about following Saturday’s win, the film showed a few things worth griping about.

Here’s the good, the bad and the ugly Freeze addressed in his first truth meeting of the season.

The good

Fortunately for Auburn, the good outweighed the bad in Saturday’s win.

In his opening statement of his press conference Monday morning, Freeze started in saying he was impressed by Auburn’s special teams play — specifically the work of Auburn’s punt and kick returners.

“I thought our special teams, the positives were that we started really fast,” Freeze said. “I think we had 131 return yards in the first quarter, which was pretty awesome.”

Auburn’s Brian Battie opened Tigers’ season with a 38-yard kickoff return after electing to field UMass’ kick from well inside the Tigers’ own endzone, giving Payton Thorne and the Auburn offense a manageable 62-yard field for their opening drive.

Later in the first quarter, Auburn cornerback Keionte Scott returned a UMass punt 56 yards to the Minutemen’s 16-yard line, once again giving the Tigers’ offense a field that was eaten up in a few short plays.

Freeze was also pleased with the defense’s ability to get off the field on late downs.

While the UMass offense saw 11 third- or fourth-down opportunities on Saturday, the Minutemen only converted one of them.

“I thought 1-of-11 on third and fourth downs, those are critical downs, and that’s a great percentage,” Freeze said. “(We) created 13 negative plays, two turnovers and had zero penalties on defense. I thought that was really nice.”

Senior cornerback Jaylin Simpson was Auburn’s ball magnet Saturday, coming away with a fumble recovery and an interception that he returned 50 yards down the field for a touchdown.

As for Auburn’s offense, averaging 6.6 yards per carry is something that really jumped out at Freeze.

Meanwhile the Tigers’ ability to keep up with the tempo, create some explosive plays, go 6-for-10 on third down and finish with 100% efficiency in the redzone are all big positives that came out of Auburn’s season-opener.

The bad

While Freeze had so much good to say about the Auburn offense, he had a few grievances — one being the some of Payton Thorne’s decision making at quarterback.

“Payton had three decisions that were wrong, and I just expect more,” Freeze said. “I expect him not to make the ones he made, and he knows that.”

Going into specifics, Freeze said there were two instances on the same drive that Thorne made the wrong read.

“He handed a ball off and the safety triggered so hard, and the safety made the hit like 1 yard in the backfield. So, I’m — ‘How do you not see that?!’ That ball should be thrown,” Freeze said. “Then about two plays later, the darn safety stays as high as he can, and we pull it and throw it. Those are the things that can’t happen. He’s too intelligent, has too much of an IQ and he’ll get that cleaned up and fixed.”

Thorne finished his first outing in an Auburn uniform 10-for-17 for 141 yards and a touchdown pass.

In addition to some missed reads, Freeze said the perimeter blocking along the offensive line could’ve been better, as could’ve some of the receivers’ route running and the effort on special teams in the second half, when he counted six missed tackles.

The ugly

Freeze says there was one “glaring negative” he saw Saturday that he and Auburn won’t be able to get away with down the stretch as the Tigers’ schedule stiffens.

“The big glaring negative that we got by with in this game, but we will not get by with in future games, is alignment and assignment,” Freeze said. “And that’s frustrating to me. We had numerous snaps — probably 15, I think it was — that we’re not lined up properly. And it’s going to bite us big time if that continues to be the issue.”

While it’s worth noting — as Freeze did — that the Tigers played a ton of young guys against UMass, Freeze doesn’t want to make excuses.

And he let his coaching staff hear about it during their meeting on Sunday.

“Our coaches’ meeting, truthfully, yesterday wasn’t really pleasant,” Freeze said. “It wasn’t demeaning. It was, ‘Guys, here are the facts. This is reality. This is who we are right now. And thank God we get to celebrate being 1-0 and won in Jordan-Hare and we won’t take that lightly. That’s awesome. However, this is what I see and if that continues, we won’t be celebrating a whole lot.’

“I’ve said I don’t know how great we can be this year. I don’t. But we ought to be able to line up right and play hard and that’s what we’ve got to get fixed. I thought our kids played hard and I thought it was a clean game. But you can’t line up wrong 15 times.”