Come the 2024 season, the play call sheet will return to the hands of Auburn head coach Hugh Freeze, ESPN’s Chris Low reported Tuesday morning.

Matt Zenitz of 247Sports hinted at the same news Friday, but added the decision hadn’t been made yet.

The news comes after Freeze’s decision not to retain offensive coordinator Philip Montgomery, who served as the Tigers’ play caller in 2023. Low reports that Freeze “looked at a couple different options” after Montgomery’s firing, but sounds to have settled on calling plays himself.

In each of his previous head coaching stops at Arkansas State, Ole Miss and Liberty, Freeze served as his own offensive play-caller. But Freeze chose to surrender those duties to Montgomery when he arrived at Auburn.

“I hired Philip to call plays,” Freeze said during SEC Media Days on July 18. “Now, I have done this for years. I think at one point I was one of the better play callers in the country. I haven’t felt like I was quite on my game, but I could still manage a game and figure out a way to win.”

Instead, Freeze opted to take a step back from offensive play calling to be more involved in the Tigers’ recruiting efforts.

That decision proved to come with some give and take as Auburn currently sits with the seventh-ranked recruiting class in the country, according to 247Sports, but was near the bottom of the barrel in a number of offensive categories come the end of the 2023 season.

With Montgomery at the wheel of Auburn’s offense in 2023, the Tigers’ finished 11th in the SEC in scoring offense, while Auburn’s offense finished ranked 121st in passing offense — leaving just nine teams in FBS with a worse showing.

Throughout Auburn’s turbulent season on offense, Freeze made it clear he struggled not being more involved in the play-calling efforts.

“This is new for me,” Freeze said of not calling plays after Auburn’s abysmal showing at Texas A&M. “It’s a struggle for me. I’ve confessed that to everyone in the building.”

After Auburn’s loss to Ole Miss on Oct. 21, which saw the Tigers’ offense use the same, weird quarterback rotation it had all season with Payton Thorne and Robby Ashford, Freeze felt inclined to grab at the reins.

“I went in after the Ole Miss game and I said, ‘This is it, this is what we’re doing,’’” Freeze said. “‘And don’t anybody ask me anything else, because this is what we’re doing.’”

And following Tuesday morning’s news, it sounds like there will be a lot more of that in the coming season.

Meanwhile, with Montgomery out, Auburn still has a vacant spot on its offensive staff.

It appears likely Freeze could elevate current Auburn staffer Kent Austin, who currently serves as special assistant to the head coach on the Tigers’ staff but has a long history of coaching quarterbacks — a responsibility that was previously held by Montgomery.

However, what exactly Freeze and the Tigers do with that vacant position is yet to announced.