The problem started with Auburn’s secondary. It’s one of Auburn’s only position groups with returning experience and on paper, could be the team’s strongest overall unit. Cornerbacks Nehemiah Pritchett and DJ James both have NFL potential and are among the best players and leaders on Auburn’s roster.

And according to Hugh Freeze, they practiced like they knew that.

“It’s really easy if you think you’re the guy, which they are, it’s really easy to coast and I thought they coasted some the first week,” Freeze said. “I mean, both of those have the potential to be all-SEC type players, whether it’s first team, second team, whatever. So practice like it.”

Pritchett and James struggled early on in the preseason, and that showed in Auburn’s first scrimmage when the entire secondary tackled poorly. Auburn needed that group to be one it can count on without questions.

So Freeze called out Pritchett and James. He thinks it worked.

“If you can call your best players out and they respond well, that sure helps you as a coach with everybody else,” Freeze said after Auburn’s second scrimmage. “And so I thought they kind of flipped the switch a little bit and had a better week.”

It’s all part of Freeze’s new strategy as a head coach. He wants to be a jerk.

During practice, Freeze wears a microphone that plays through the large speakers hanging over the practice field. His voice, though often fairly indescribable, will play over the blaring music during drills.

He said being this jerk in practice, whether in a player’s face or overhead, is what he’s learned about coaching an Auburn group he said is in need of a culture change.

“I think every DNA of every team I’ve coached is a little different and every staff is a little different,” Freeze said. “Truthfully, the last four years, I haven’t had to be, how should I say it, the practice jerk. But I’ve kind of found out I need to be that here, and calling people out. I like to refer to it as calling people up.”

That’s what Freeze did with Pritchett and James — calling them up, to use his words. The idea is not to be a coach that everyone hates, but to be hard on his players as a means of motivation to get what he wants out of them.

“I think it’s been good,” quarterback Payton Thorne said of Freeze being a so-called jerk. “I expect Coach to push me. I feel like that’s definitely something he’s gonna do and continue to do. I feel like it’s been good. I love everything Coach is preaching. I believe in what Coach is preaching. I feel like our relationship will continue to grow and move in the right direction.”

It seemed to work for the secondary, which Freeze said showed much improved tackling during Auburn’s second week of practice and second scrimmage, but still needs to improve getting off blocks.

Freeze called the secondary the team’s most improved unit over the second week of practice.

This whole summer with Auburn has been about experimenting. Freeze brought in over 40 new players — something he’s never done before and which at the start of fall camp Freeze said made him uncomfortable — and tried to reshape Auburn to fit his image. That meant what he hopes will be an infusion of talent to a roster that had struggled in the SEC the last two seasons, a change at quarterback, building optimism around the recruiting trail and a change in schematic philosophy.

“I’m figuring out the coaches too and what I need to do to motivate our team,” Freeze said.

Turns out that meant a change in his coaching philosophy too. It’s another one of the many experiments to see what works. Freeze said every team has a different make up, but that’s also not something he was going to have a grasp on quickly.

This is the culture he hopes to build — of playing to the standard he holds. He doesn’t want to be a jerk forever.

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