Hugh Freeze didn’t call many plays out in Berkeley, but the one he did would end up being among the most important of the night.

Freeze called the 5-yard fade route for Rivaldo Fairweather in the back corner of the endzone. He told quarterback Payton Thorne to just put the ball up, that he knew Fairweather would make the play.

He did. It was the pinnacle play of the one drive where Auburn had any sort of offensive success in a 14-10 win against Cal.

Freeze gave up primary playcalling duties coming into this season. He said he no longer felt like he was quite as sharp as he once was. So Freeze hired Philip Montgomery as offensive coordinator with the job of taking on those duties.

But Freeze said he still had the right to chime in and call in his own plays.

In Week 1 against UMass, Freeze said the balance of calling plays between himself and Montgomery was easy. The offensive output of 59 points and nearly 300 rushing yards would indicate that.

Cal was much harder. Auburn’s offense was “awful,” Freeze said. But other than a few fleeting spots, Freeze said he didn’t take over while the offense struggled.

“It’s hard, I’m not going to lie,” Freeze said Monday of not taking over playcalling.

Auburn had 230 total yards of offense. It had 94 total passing yards between Payton Thorne and Robby Ashford. There were wide receivers who couldn’t get open, penalties which pushed Auburn back and running backs running the wrong way on key third down plays. Everything that seemed like it could have gone wrong on offense did.

The stagnant offense against Cal leaves Freeze in the curious position between the role he either should or would like to have calling plays compared to his stated goal of focusing more on the overall team and not boxing himself so much into the offense.

Freeze is not at the point of taking play calling back from Montgomery. He said it’s one bad game, and he doesn’t plan to overreact.

What he did do was spend time talking to Montgomery after the game about what went wrong. And in the short term, that performance is going to lead to increased oversight from Freeze in game planning.

Freeze said he plans to be a bigger part of offensive meetings this week. He suggested he hadn’t spent enough time in those meetings last week.

“I can’t be everywhere, but ultimately I have to own everything,” Freeze said. “I spent a lot of time with our defensive guys last week and I’m going to spend a lot of time with our offensive guys this week. But it’s about us all seeking wisdom as to how we can get better, me included.”

This isn’t a situation where Freeze is considering pulling playcalling from Montgomery. That isn’t on the table at this point. Freeze said he trusts Montgomery.

Stepping into more game preparation meetings will be a means to keep planning on the same page. He wants to be more involved in collaboration.

“I didn’t see many awful playcalls, truthfully,” Freeze said. “They all had a chance to work. Nothing schematically was off about it. I think we need a little more balance and we’ve got to figure out what that looks like exactly, that our quarterbacks and receivers can handle. And our RPO world, we didn’t utilize near enough. We’ve got to work on that. So we’ll challenge ourselves to be better this week as coaches and players.

So how does this playcalling duo work going forward? Freeze made a few play calls against Cal, including the one that ended up being the game-winning play. Freeze has said before that who called plays could depend on who had the hot hand, so to speak.

Yet the inability to find a spark anywhere on offense would appear like the situation where Freeze had implied previously that he could step in.

Freeze suggested part of the difficulty Saturday came from an inability to find success on first down, which then prevented Auburn from getting into the high offensive tempo it likes to run. That may have thrown off any play-calling rhythm, too.

Freeze said Montgomery doesn’t have an ego regarding the potential of the head coach stepping in to call plays. That may end up being essential to making this work.

“It was just totally different from what I expected,” Freeze said. “Again, Philip is going to be fine. We’re going to work together this week and see if we can’t get a great plan in place to not repeat last week’s performance.”

Matt Cohen covers Auburn sports for AL.com. You can follow him on Twitter at @Matt_Cohen_ or email him at [email protected]