Auburn’s offensive line proved to be reliable in Week 1, guiding the Tigers to 289 rushing yards on the game.

Tigers’ head coach Hugh Freeze got lots of guys in the rotation Saturday against UMass, playing 13 different offensive lineman. Getting productive play out of that many players is encouraging for Freeze, but he hopes to keep his rotation around 9 players.

“We played 13 guys, but that obviously had something to do with the score,” Freeze said during the SEC coaches teleconference Wednesday. “I think we’re really comfortable with 9 guys right now and I think it’s probably going to be 2 or 3 or 4 games before we kind of settle in exactly what that looks like from game to game.”

Freeze had high praise for one of his linemen specifically. Senior lineman Gunner Britton was an anchor for the offensive line in Week 1 and earned SEC Offensive Lineman of the Week. But Freeze also saw greatness from the rest of his offensive line next to Britton.

“He’s very valuable to us, can play all 5 positions and we move him around quite a bit,” Freeze said. “But the other 7-8 guys I thought played well. Again, we were able to run the football, which makes things better, but as the season goes on we’ll get tested more with the fronts that we’re going to face and that will probably determine how we feel about those 8 or 9 guys. We hope we can stay healthy there.”

Auburn is looking for a big win this weekend as the Tigers take on Cal on the road. The Tigers and Bears will kickoff at 10:30 p.m. ET Saturday.