While Auburn's coaches and players got to take a little bit of time to rest up during the bye week, they also stayed busy.

From going out on the road and recruiting to some captain-led practices and getting players healthy, the team took advantage of its time off to keep working.

But Auburn also headed into the bye week coming off a big win at Arkansas. Harsin didn't want the group to lose its momentum. He doesn't feel like they did.

"It’s about the mentality of your players," Harsin said. "Are we still trying to get better through the bye week? I don’t think we took the bye week for granted. I think we went out there, and guys practiced hard, from what I saw."

Most of Auburn's position coaches were on the road recruiting and watching high school games, so it ended up being just Harsin, inside linebackers coach Jeff Schmedding and the analysts at Auburn's practices.

Because of that, Harsin says the practices ended up being similar to a Summer captain-led practice.

"I don’t think we wasted any time. I think the guys conditioned well, so sometimes guys will want to just relax and back off and kind of take a whole week off. We’re just not that — one, that’s not our mentality, and two, I think our players — and certainly we know as a staff — we’re nowhere where we need to be in order for us to have a day where we can just kind of back off.

"We’re still learning, we’re still developing. We’re still spending a ton of time on just getting some of these basic fundamentals and even schemes and details still installed to the point where we can do them at a consistent, consistent rate."

One of the big keys for the off week was getting players healthy. Mainly, linebacker Owen Pappoe who continues to nurse an ankle injury that's kept him out of four-straight games.

"So getting a few guys just feeling better and a chance to hopefully get some guys back through the bye week which was good and good timing for us," Harsin said.

Auburn returns to a normal practice and game week schedule on Tuesday ahead of the Ole Miss game this Saturday at Jordan-Hare. The game is slated for 6 p.m. CT and is available on ESPN.

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