Auburn bye week: What the Tigers plan to fix ahead of road game at Georgia

By Jerry Humphrey III | jhumphreyiii@al.comIt’s time for Auburn to go back to the drawing board. After falling to No. 17 Tennessee 24-14 on Saturday, Auburn now sits at 3-2 overall and 1-2 in conference play. Auburn enters its bye week with a loaded agenda ahead of its next SEC game with No. 2 Georgia. “We’ll practice just like we normally do. We’re just going to push it all back a day,” Auburn coach Alex Golesh said. “We’ll treat Monday as a Sunday and Tuesday as a Monday. We’ll be back on the field Monday and have a normal Tuesday practice on Wednesday. Have a modified Wednesday practice on Thursday. We’ll bring them in Friday morning and lift them. They’ll walk through and have Friday evening and Saturday off. Then we’ll pick up in a normal game week.“The crowd noise will continue to be a huge piece next week. It has to be. You don’t want to learn lessons in games. You try to simulate it all through practice. I felt like we were in a good spot that way. We practiced it through the summer and fall camp. We obviously hammered it like crazy this past week. Somewhere in there we weren’t where we needed to be. We’ll go back to the drawing board, and it has to be a huge piece of what we clean up going into next week.”Auburn wide receiver Keshaun Singleton (11) catches a pass as he is defended by Tennessee defensive back Kayin Lee, left, during the first half of an NCAA college football game Saturday, Oct. 3, 2026, in Knoxville, Tenn. (AP Photo/Wade Payne)APTennessee was the Tigers’ first true road game of the season, and Auburn totaled 11 penalties as a team. Auburn center Cole Best said that all came down to a lack of communication.“There were times where the crowd noise, like any away environment in this league, makes it tough,” Auburn center Cole Best said. “Thought about the other 50 percent was just communication and being on the same page as an O-line. And again, that points right back to me. I’ve got to be better for us. I got to be better for this team.”The rest of the roster is focused on improvement during the bye week.“Focus on us,” quarterback Byrum Brown said. “Get better at what we’ve got to be better at and be very intentional, very detailed and bring everyone along because we are a fantastic football team when we’re clicking on all cylinders. We just have to do that from the very jump for all four quarters.”Defensive captain Elijah Melendez emphasized the importance of recovery. However, he plans on fine-tuning his fundamentals to help address Auburn’s recent struggles against the run game. “I’ll say just being physical in our gaps, just getting knocked back and being physical in our gaps,” Melendez said about Auburn’s run defense. “I think the D-line did a great job. That all falls down to me and the other linebackers just filling those extra gaps.“Bye week, I’ll really say just recovery and rest. Also practicing hard, just getting our bodies feeling right and just go back to work.”Wide receiver Chas Nimrod said the improvements all start in practice, and he believes the leaders of the team will ensure everyone is taking every day seriously during the break. “You can’t really take a deep breath. I think that this bye week for us will be huge,” Nimrod said. “We can go out there and work on ourselves even more. I know that a lot of people want to take a deep breath, but we can’t. And so just staying on everybody, making sure everybody’s going out there and actually working like it’s a workday. “Just letting them know that we don’t have time to take a deep breath. And that if we’re going to want to go do what we say we’re going to do, we’re going to have to go out next week and take advantage of it, get our bodies back, but really take advantage of the practice.”Jerry Humphrey III is an Auburn Sports Beat Writer for AL.com since Oct. 2024, covering football, basketball and all things Auburn sports. Prior to joining the sports staff at AL.com, Jerry spent time at...