Off-the-field adjustments key for Auburn during bye week
A bye week gives a team more time to dissect what happens on the practice field, yes. But for the Tigers, they’re glad to finally get time to slow things down off the field.
Auburn (5-1, 2-1 SEC) was one of a handful of teams to play six games off the bat without using one of its two bye weeks. This past week, however, the team was able to slow its roll, focusing on attention to detail with younger players, specifically.
Because, as senior Derrick Brown put it, there’s not always time to answer every single question when a conference contest looms on Saturday.
“I think it's very important,” Brown said. “This is a week for us to just get better at what we do. Sometimes you go through the season so fast and install so many new things and the ball is just rolling and just rolling. And now it kind of gives you a chance to slow down so those guys, if they have any questions, they can ask those questions and be able to get full explanations in the meeting rooms. And it gives us more time in the meeting rooms, which is really important.”
Head coach Gus Malzahn, who has never lost a game following a bye week in his career with the Tigers (8-0), had three bullet points he hoped to cross off last week.
And he, too, emphasized that one-on-one time to work with young players, or players that have maybe fallen behind with the speed and workload of the season, is paramount.
“I think the first thing is just getting better at us,” Malzahn said. “The second thing is healing up; we got some of our guys that are banged up, got to heal up. Then some extra time on Arkansas. So, really that’s our three objectives. Any time you got a chance to kind of slow down fundamentally, just try to find one thing for each player — just hey, really work on this.”
Malzahn and his staff also planned to watch every single snap of their team from the first six games and come away with some big-picture adjustments for the second half of the year that they maybe missed the first time around.
“A lot of times when you do that, you’re able to see things that can help you moving forward and it also helps you — hey, we’re really good at this, we’re not good at that,” Malzahn said. “It gives you a lot of good information. So, really, from a staff standpoint and all three phases, that’s kind of what we’re focused on — just improving the fundamentals and getting the best plan moving forward, not just for the next opponent, but the whole second half of the season.”
Auburn will take on Arkansas (2-4, 0-3) out of the bye week on Saturday at 11 a.m. CST in Fayetteville. The Tigers have won their last three against the Razorbacks by a combined 142-26.
“We’re focusing on us this week and taking care of the little small things that we left out there at Florida,” senior running back Kam Martin said. “We’re going to get better and like I said, we’re focusing on the basics this week.”
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