Earlier this week, Auburn’s first-year head coach Hugh Freeze was asked about the role of Cadillac Williams, who doubles as Auburn’s associate head coach and running backs coach.

“He’s someone I lean on to get the pulse of the team, for sure,” Freeze said Wednesday afternoon during his time on the SEC coaches’ teleconference.

So when it came time for Freeze to choose someone to deliver the pregame speech ahead of Saturday’s game against Mississippi State, the decision was easy: The talking stick was going to Williams, who was forced into a somewhat similar situation last season.

Auburn was on a four-game losing streak last fall when former head coach Bryan Harsin was fired and Williams was asked to lead the Tigers through the back half of the season as the team’s interim head coach.

The first team the Tigers would face under Williams’ leadership?

The Mississippi State Bulldogs.

As a former Auburn player himself, Williams knew just the buttons to press and helped motivate a second-half surge from the Tigers, who ended up forcing overtime but falling short against the Bulldogs.

Nonetheless, Williams’ message to Auburn early last November drew a passionate effort out of the Tigers. And it was up to him get a similar outcome from Auburn on Saturday afternoon as the Tigers once again found themselves looking to end a four-game skid.

“It was kind of really a nostalgic thing, to be honest,” Auburn linebacker Eugene Asante said of Williams’ speech. “I was like, ‘Oh. This is giving flashbacks of last year.’ But it was a really good thing. I think Coach Freeze did a really good job in terms of letting Cadillac come up there and incorporate his philosophy to the team.”

But more important than the speech itself, Williams’ pregame message worked as the Tigers topped the Mississippi State Bulldogs 27-13 from Jordan-Hare Stadium on Saturday, putting an end to a four-game slide and giving Auburn its first SEC win under Freeze.

Williams’ message was simple.

“His message was just forget about everything and think about ourselves,” said Auburn tight end Rivaldo Fairweather. “Think about what we play for. Think about our why. Just go out there, put it all on the line. And his message got to everybody, it really touched everybody.”

Fairweather went on to say that the team he saw on Pat Dye Field on Saturday was new team – one that “put their head down and went to work.”

For the first time since Auburn hosted Samford on Sept. 16, the Tigers’ offense moved the ball – on the ground and through the air.

Freeze decided it was time to “put up or shut up” in terms of the quarterback situation and seemingly put the two-quarterback rotation to bed and allowed junior Michigan State transfer Payton Thorne to have full control of the offense.

By halftime, Thorne had passed for 192 yards and three touchdowns – becoming the first Auburn quarterback to tally three touchdown passes in one game since Bo Nix against LSU in 2020. And he did it in just one half of play.

Thorne finished 20-for-26 through the air for 230 yards and that trio of touchdown passes.

“I’ve said all week in every media deal that I was on that we had to be balanced, and we had to throw the football,” Freeze said. “That was the plan. Fortunately, we executed it pretty well.”

While Thorne put together a solid night, Freeze was most excited about the success his wide receiver room had.

Thorne dished the ball out to 11 different pass catchers Saturday – of which six came from inside the wide receiver room, which has heard its fair share of criticism this season.

“Obviously, I do think we had work to do,” Freeze said of his wide receiver corps. “But to see them keep working and keep working and then have good things happen to them, on a Saturday in an SEC game, it’s really gratifying”

The Tigers had their way on the ground, too, as junior running back Jarquez Hunter became the first Auburn rusher to notch a 100-plus-yard game with a 149-yard afternoon.

Defensively, the Tigers got punched in the gut early with a pair of chunk yardage plays that allowed the Bulldogs to get into field goal range quickly. But Auburn stopped Mississippi State there, forcing the ‘Dogs to settle for just three points.

The Tigers’ defense gave up another field goal in the third quarter and didn’t allow a touchdown until early in the fourth quarter.

“Truthfully, we gave up too many explosive plays,” Freeze said of the defense. “But I thought they did a good job keeping ‘em outta the end zone.”

As a coach, it’s Freeze’s job to nit-pick – that’s the only way a team gets better.

But with the season winding down and Auburn still needing a handful of wins to reach bowl eligibility, Freeze knew it likely had to start on Saturday afternoon at Jordan-Hare Stadium against Mississippi State.

“This was a big one for us, I think, with the remaining stretch that we have and going on the road the next two weeks,” Freeze said. “This was kind of a — and you never want to say it, because you don’t want to make too much of one game — but it had the feeling, for me, as a critical game.”

Between that, and the fact that Freeze knows you can never take SEC wins for granted, he wasn’t going to let the nit-picking get in the way of an opportunity to celebrate.

And so when the final whistle blew and Freeze made his way back into the locker room, he didn’t skip out on the dance party.

“Coach Freeze, he’s currently working on his dance moves,” Asante joked. “A little stiff in the hips, I’m just going to be honest, but he goes out there and does his best. We’re going to continue to grow upon the dance moves, and Coach Freeze is going to dance the rest of the season. We want that, we want him to be dancing for the rest of the season.”

And though Saturday ended with a dance party in the locker room, in an effort to give credit where credit is due, it started with a locker room speech from Cadillac Williams.