Auburn held its first scrimmage of training camp recently and the way Gus Malzahn tells it, the coaches used the opportunity to find out what they had in the players after nearly eight months away from the gridiron.
The Tigers ran a simple scrimmage to get a feel for things with a new offense continuing to be installed and a large number of defensive contributors from last season’s team now suiting up in the NFL.
“We just put the ball on the minus 30, and we operated with three groups we let everybody play. And so that was really our plan,” Malzahn said of the scrimmage during his recent press conference. “One group got out there and I let him stay out there until they either had punt, kick a field goal or score. It was really – simple as that.
“It was real basic and there wasn’t anything that obviously going on in practice for four days, so it wasn’t a whole lot of, you know, special type plays or defenses or offense or anything like that it.”
While something can be learned from every scrimmage, Malzahn said the coaches really needed it as much as the players after not having seen any real action since the bowl game against Minnesota.
“It was just an evaluation scrimmage. Where we’re at, I mean you got to keep in mind, we’ve not been out on that football field since January 1,” Malzahn added.
So far, so good, according to Malzahn.
“It was really good for our coaches to see where we’re at,” the coach also said.
Auburn shared some clips from the scrimmage in the video below:
Whole different vibe when it's football in Jordan-Hare.
Fall Scrimmage No. 1: ☑️ pic.twitter.com/vTH4115VQJ
— Auburn Football (@AuburnFootball) August 22, 2020
A graduate of the University of Tennessee, Michael Wayne Bratton oversees the news coverage for Saturday Down South. Michael previously worked for FOX Sports and NFL.com
