Bryan Harsin breaks down spring practice schedule

[aubiefifty 16,766]

Bryan Harsin breaks down Auburn's spring practice schedule

By Nathan King5 hrs

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The first football practices of the Bryan Harsin era at Auburn are right around the corner.

After seven weeks of winter workouts, led by new strength and conditioning coach Jeff Pitman, the Tigers will begin spring football next Monday. With Auburn under new leadership in spring for the first time since 2013, fans and those within the program are excited to witness how Harsin approaches a critical period in building toward his first season on the Plains.

“I think the 15 practices in spring are maybe the most valuable practices you get in an entire year," Harsin said Monday on the Talking Tigers podcast with Andy Burcham of the AU Radio Network. "It sets the stage for your whole entire summer because in the summertime, that’s where the greatest development comes for a particular player — their strength, their speed, their football intelligence. All the things they’re preparing to execute during a season happens in the summer. You fine-tune that in fall camp, but where does it all come from? It comes from the spring.”

Auburn was a week away from spring ball last year when the COVID-19 pandemic shutdown hit the country.

“To not practice, that’s a difficult, difficult thing to do," Harsin said. "We went through it at Boise. … That was a challenge, and you could tell how it affected our football team in the summer and in fall camp and how we played. This is vital that we get these practices in. It’s important that we get a chance, especially being new, to see and maximize every single day and every rep on film that we can go back and show our players.”

Auburn will hit the field this spring on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays. Harsin said he likes to take a day in between — Tuesdays and Thursdays — to “watch the film and process what happened” on the previous day of practice, as well as “recover and refresh.”

Then the team will go straight from Friday into a Saturday practice, which Harsin said gives an “in-season feel” to the spring schedule and gets players prepared for what working on back-to-back days in the grind of the fall season feels like.

Auburn will scrimmage after the first two weeks of practice, then take a week off at the time of the semester that would usually mark spring break. The university isn’t observing spring break this year, with “wellness days” taking its place, but Harsin said he still thinks the players need that down time before closing out strong and working toward the spring game.

After returning from the week off, Harsin said the final two weeks of spring practice will be focused on “wrinkles” and introducing newer concepts and philosophies to the players, after coaches feel they’ve established a baseline for each position group in the weeks prior.

“That’s the best part about spring — it’s a test-and-tune time to be able to work on things,” Harsin said. “We can say hey, do we like this? Which direction do we want to go? Do we need to spend more time on fundamentals? It allows you flexibility.”

Harsin said the team is not yet where it needs to be heading into the spring, but that’s by design. They’ll be exactly where he and the coaching staff want them to be, developmentally, at all times. Harsin said he doesn’t want players or coaches getting ahead of themselves this winter, spring, summer or fall.

His master plan is for the team as a whole to be peaking right before the first game, and not a moment sooner.

 

The program’s annual A-Day spring game is set for April 17. Auburn has yet to announce how the event will take place or what sort of COVID-19 restrictions will be in place for attendance.

“We all hope that Jordan-Hare is full capacity and that we can get that experience with our fan base — we can have Tiger Walk, we can do all the things that make Auburn football so special,” Harsin said. “I feel like the excitement and that momentum really from our fans and people that support our program and are part of Auburn football — all that momentum makes a difference. It creates the culture. It creates the recruiting success. It creates the development of our team because we have the momentum; we have that energy and excitement behind what we’re doing. We can’t do that alone, so we need everybody to be a part of that.”

[AUpreacherman22 3,885]

CBH continues to say the right things that makes me believe he both “gets Auburn” and knows how to run a big time program! 

[soblfly 33]

I agree. Definitely a breath of fresh air. I really like the energy he brings to the program. 

[Chaotic_zx 1,044]

On 3/8/2021 at 5:13 PM, aubiefifty said:

His master plan is for the team as a whole to be peaking right before the first game, and not a moment sooner.

What is the world does this mean? You should only know who will be doing what in the third game. Before then is just wastefull.    /s

[aubiefifty 16,766]

1 minute ago, Chaotic_zx said:

What is the world does this mean? You should only know who will be doing what in the third game. Before then is just wastefull.    /s

to me it says he wants his team to be best on gameday and not practice? he is new to me too so i cannot say with certainty..............

[Chaotic_zx 1,044]

2 hours ago, aubiefifty said:

to me it says he wants his team to be best on gameday and not practice? he is new to me too so i cannot say with certainty..............

I was being sarcastic and taking a shot at the former regime. I agree with him that a team needs to be prepared going into the season.

[aubiefifty 16,766]

Just now, Chaotic_zx said:

I was being sarcastic and taking a shot at the former regime. I agree with him that a team needs to be prepared going into the season.

65 year old geezer and resident pothead. i miss a lot lol. but please engage me anytime.

[Hank2020 3,199]

2 hours ago, Chaotic_zx said:

What is the world does this mean? You should only know who will be doing what in the third game. Before then is just wastefull.    /s

Great post if you meant to “facetious”.

[toddc 13,194]

4 hours ago, Hank2020 said:

Great post if you meant to “facetious”.

/s means sarcasm I think