Observations: Day 12 of Auburn Football Fall Camp
Positive injury news, a position change and the edges of both lines headline our takeaways from the last practice before the second scrimmage.
AUBURN — “Fall camp,” or at least the concept of it, is drawing to a close at Auburn.
School started Monday. The Tigers moved out of their camp home at Grand National over the weekend. They’ll have their second scrimmage of the preseason Wednesday, then they’ll get back to work Friday and Saturday. From there, it will be two weeks until the season opener against Baylor, meaning that game prep is on the horizon.
Because of the scrimmage Wednesday — and, maybe, the still-insane levels of heat — Auburn was back inside for practice Tuesday. Media members were allowed to watch the first two periods, which featured individual position drills across the indoor field.
Auburn has hit the time of the preseason when just getting players to Week 1 is rapidly growing in terms of priority.
Several important pieces weren’t practicing Tuesday, but that isn’t a real surprise. Some players have been on “pitch counts,” so to speak, in hopes of preserving them for the start of the season. Alex Golesh has talked openly about holding out starters in certain spots in camp.
It could be easy to overreact to any absences or changes to the practice availability report Tuesday and fear the worst as a fan. A great recent example is Texas, a team that’s expected to contend for championships this season — and just had to watch its first-team All-SEC offensive tackle go down with a non-contact injury.
But the most important thing for Auburn right now is that it gets to the start of the season as healthy as possible. That doesn’t mean you stop the preseason work, of course. There’s still plenty to be done. However, the staff can be strategic in spots.
After the shorter viewing window Tuesday morning, media members got to speak with two more assistants — edge rushers coach Coleman Hutzler and tight ends coach Larry Scott — along with four more players.
Here’s everything we saw and heard from the Tigers on Tuesday as they geared up for their second scrimmage trip to Jordan-Hare Stadium in less than a week.
