Tigers go young in 2nd scrimmage

AUBURN | Gus Malzahn has a pretty good idea what his veteran players can do. So Saturday’s second scrimmage of the spring focused on the younger players, the backups.

And instead of holding a full scrimmage like last week, Malzahn cut today’s workout into a half-practice/half-scrimmage, with the practice portion focusing on special situations.

“We did some 2nd and 10 situations and then we did some 3rd down and 2. After that we really scrimmaged our twos and our threes,” Malzahn said. “And some of the orange guys, some of the first-team guys, got to rotate in that needed more reps. We went about 50, 55 plays.

“Overall, there’s whole lot of teaching that can come from a day like this, specifically the quarterbacks being young with the two-minute situations.”

Malzahn didn’t say much, he had to shower and hop on a plane, but several of the players plus a couple of onlookers had praise for quarterbacks Joey Gatewood and Bo Nix running back D.J. Williams, and defensive backs Traivon Leonard, Devan Barrett and Roger McCreary.

Some of the veterans also rotated into the scrimmage including wide receiver Sal Cannella, who had a couple of long receptions.

Gatewood and Nix got a lot of reps, but Malzahn is still holding back on making anything but a very general statement on the still four-way battle for the starting quarterback position.

“I’m not ready to say anything about anybody starting to distance themselves,” Malzahn said.

Saturday’s workout completed Auburn’s 11 of 15 practices this spring. The Tigers will go Monday, Wednesday and Friday next week before wrapping it all up with the A-Day game Saturday at 3 p.m. CT on SEC Network.

***** SCRIMMAGE/TEAM INSIDER NOTES *****