NASHVILLE | This isn’t any old fall camp, even for a first-year head coach.

Hugh Freeze and his staff replaced approximately 50 percent of Auburn’s roster in the offseason. Now, they have to take all those pieces and build a team out of it.

"That's the challenge,” said Freeze. “I don't even know all the names yet, truthfully. We're gonna have to wear tape on the helmet again. We recruited kids after spring practice, I haven't coached them.

“I haven't been able to be with them a whole lot, and truthfully it'd be hard to sit here and say I truly know them. Or that they know me. It's one of the -- I've never felt quite like this.”

Freeze will rely heavily on his assistants for part of that team building. Not all of the more than 40 newcomers can be starters, but they will all be asked to perform important roles within their position groups and on special teams.

“We're going to need everybody in that team room to be of one mind and one accord,” he said. “I went away last week to the mountains. That's something I started doing years ago. I kind of write my entire year's teaching plan. I hope that helps.

“But there's no skirting the issue. That's a challenge for us, to try to formulate a team from so many different and new faces in a very short amount of time.”

When you’re piecing together a new team with new players, new coaches and new schemes, a learning curve is to be expected. How long and how steep that curve turns out to be won’t be evident until later this fall.

"Well, I think our program is a work in progress,” said Freeze. “We're really going to have to stay tunnel visioned on what today brings. I'm not a big goal setter, I don't believe in that. I believe in what we can do today to get better. If we can stay there, then hopefully from Game 1 to Game 12 there's considerable improvement.”

Auburn begins preseason practice on Aug. 3.