AUBURN | It’s become pretty common for coaches in every sport to stick to the one week at a time mantra. It helps eliminate distractions and keeps the focus squarely on the next opponent.

But this season, facing one of the nation’s toughest schedules, Auburn’s Gus Malzahn has been particularly demonstrative in trying to keep his team securely in the present.

“I don’t look at it. That’s whatever,” said Malzahn of a schedule that still includes three top five teams. “This is Florida. This is it. This is our game. At the very first of the year I looked at our schedule, I put it up there, I told the guys, ‘Here’s the big picture,’ but that’s the last time we’re going to do that. So we’re going to Florida … and we’ll come back and we’ll have an off-week. And we’ll get our stuff all cleaned up, we’ll get a good plan and I think our next game is a road game.

“You can’t do that. You can’t think that way. There’s not reason to think that way. It’s good for y’all to think that way but we can’t think that way. We’ve got Florida and that’s the only thing on our minds. So we’re not doing that.”

No. 7 Auburn plays at No. 10 Florida Saturday afternoon. The Tigers are off to a 5-0 start including an opening win over No. 11 Oregon, a win at No. 17 Texas A&M and a blowout win over Mississippi State last weekend.

“The challenge is when things are going good, you can’t let up, you’ve got to put the hammer down even more, you’ve got to expect more out of yourself, you’ve got to try to be perfect on the practice field, don’t be satisfied with just good,” Malzahn said.

That’s been Malzahn’s message to his players this week, and really all season. So far, it’s worked quite well.

“So we be where our feet are at. So, you know, one game at a time,” said senior safety Daniel Thomas.

Kickoff is scheduled for 2:30 p.m. CT on CBS.