Three-hundred and sixty-five days ago, Hugh Freeze was introduced as Auburn’s 31st head coach in the football program’s 129-year history.

The following day, Freeze walked into the multipurpose room of Auburn’s Woltosz Football Performance Center wearing a navy suit with subtle pinstripes, a white button-up shirt beneath it, an orange necktie and an Auburn logo lapel pin. He was looking the part.

Freeze spent 45 minutes at the podium that Tuesday as he carefully navigated questions about his past transgressions, tearfully gushed about the loyalty of his wife and children and laid out what he believed would be the foundation of his rebuild project at Auburn.

That foundation came in the shape of a six-letter acronym that spelled out “FAMILY.”

The ‘F’ stood for faith, the ‘A’ stood for attitude, the ‘M’ stood for mental toughness, the ‘I’ stood for integrity, the ‘L’ stood for love and the ‘Y’ stood for you – which pointed to every person who has a role in the Auburn football program, from the players and coaches to the fans.

And despite a mixed bag of reactions to his hiring, his honesty about his well-documented past, family orientation and clear vision for the Tigers’ football program helped him check off the box of sounding the part, too.

But he had yet to prove he could act the part.

That was one year ago.

Since then, however, Freeze has had the opportunity to prove he could act the part. Those opportunities existed via a transfer-heavy offseason, a competitive fall camp, a stiff 2023 regular season and on the recruiting trail.

With more than 20 incoming transfers in the offseason, Freeze landed the fifth-ranked transfer portal class.

And despite a four-game skid in the middle of the season and one time having a 3-4 record, Freeze and the Tigers fought their way back to bowl eligibility, which Freeze said was a big part of his year-one vision.

“I’m proud of our kids and the fight that we showed,” Freeze said Monday. “You lose four-straight games and that thing could have gone a lot of different ways. And I thought they stayed engaged, which says our staff did a decent job of keeping them engaged.”

On the recruiting trail, Freeze has helped Auburn string together the 17th-ranked recruiting class for the 2024 cycle – a jump from two seasons ago, when the previous coaching staff finished with the 21st-ranked class, which didn’t feature a single 5-star commit.

Meanwhile, Freeze and his staff have earned the commitment of a pair of 5-star recruits in wide receiver Perry Thompson and linebacker Demarcus Riddick.

Auburn’s 2025 recruiting class is on pace to be one of the best in the country as it currently ranks as the fifth-best.

But those are all accomplishments the public eye gets to see.

Freeze was asked Monday about the growth he’s seen within the program that maybe outsiders don’t have the privilege of seeing.

“If you take away Week 11, I think we’ve made great strides in our culture,” Freeze said, isolating Auburn’s collapse against New Mexico State on Nov. 18. “Even with that week, we have started learning about true accountability. What it’s like for me as an individual to meet the standard every single day that it takes.”

When Freeze arrived at Auburn, he admits that accountability was lacking within the locker room.

It was little things like being late to class or skipping out on team meals that Freeze believed had the prospect of bleeding into football games.

“I do not think that you can win big games if you don’t have a large percentage of your team buying into that accountability to each other,” Freeze added Monday.

So preaching accountability became a big focal point in his first season. And Freeze believes he’s seeing the payoff.

However, there are still elements of Auburn’s locker room culture that Freeze hopes to see improve as his tenure continues to unfold. And one of those is the connection and togetherness of the Tigers.

“One of the things I think is the greatest challenge we have probably now in these college football rooms, team rooms, staffing, is true connection… And when we have that true connection in a relationship, you can really hold each other accountable,” Freeze said following the loss to New Mexico State. “That’s something I’ve got to work on to for us to feel more connected for when you get hit in the face like you did Saturday.”

When asked to reflect on the improvements made in Year 1 on Monday, Freeze revisited the fact that there’s room to grow in terms of the team’s togetherness and connection.

“When you and I played, there was this element in our locker room and outside the locker room of community and communicate,” Freeze said Monday. “Man, this new world of we talk to each other through text and we date through Snapchat and all of that world, I think you miss that element of true community.”

Unfortunately for Freeze, he’ll be hard pressed to get his players to put down their cell phones anytime soon.

But considering Freeze shouldn’t need to do quite the roster overhaul that he needed to do prior to this season, a sense of connection is bound to grow with time.

All that said, when asked what he was most proud of in his first season on The Plains, Freeze took a long pause before offering his answer, which had nothing to do with Xs and Os, wins and losses or what’s going on inside the locker room.

“Probably most proud of the Auburn family that supported us,” Freeze said. “It’s hard for me to sit here and say that I am proud of delivering six wins when I felt like it could have been more. But, man, the Auburn family and fans have blown me away, which makes us want to deliver to them a product that they can be so happy with.”

And if Freeze has learned anything in his first full season with the Tigers, it’s that Auburn isn’t a place with unreasonable championship expectations.

“I’m absolutely, positively convinced this place can be an elite program,” Freeze said Monday. “This place, the support it has, the energy, the fanbase, the culture, the family feel, the administration alignment, the facilities, everything is here for us to build — and I say build, these things don’t happen overnight — to build a championship team here. We can do it.”