Coffee and Magnolia: August 21st

Hello again. Thanks to Walt for his post yesterday catching us all up on some of the happenings of the first half of this week.

If you haven't had a chance to glance at SB Nation's beautiful season preview yet, go ahead and save it to read sometime soon. Beware: it's extensive.

This Joel Erickson article from yesterday shows Auburn's passing game continuing to be a focus of observers of the team, as they look to accentuate the factors that led to the rapid late-season progression of Nick Marshall's efficiency last year. Erickson's post features video of Rhett Lashlee talking about his offense.

It helps that he has basically all of his outside help from 2013 back for this fall, as well as, of course, Duke Williams. The official Auburn site shared some thoughts from Malzhan and receivers coach Dameyune Craig on the way the latter's unit is shaping up for 2014.

AL.com's Brandon Marcello wrote about freshman Sean White impressing enough during fall practice that he's now the third quarterback on the depth chart. If you want to get excited about a guy who is two disasters and at least a 2015 spring battle away from his preferred job, read the article which is full of praise for the Boca Raton native.

Phillip Marshall posted a quick thought on the experience of Auburn's interior lines, noting seven seniors will play between the two sides of the line: five on defense, two on offense. Speaking of Auburn's seniors, eleven were named to the Senior Bowl's watch list yesterday - six on offense, five on defense.

Just before football gets under way, the SEC released the conference basketball schedule, and we had Tuco investigate a bit about what Auburn fans can (maybe reasonably?) hope for this season.

My local NFL team (The Fightin' Chip Kellys) traded for touchback machine Cody Parkey yesterday, and Philly.com wrote a little bit about his career on the Plains and his prospects of kicking meaningful kicks in a 2014 NFL game.

The AP tells us the Penn State-UCF game scheduled for play in Dublin next weekend could be affected by an Icelandic volcano erupting, as more than 100,000 flights to Europe were postponed or canceled in the wake of the 2010 blow of Eyjafjallajokul.

Be sure to catch the SEC Network's debut of "Bo, Barkley and the Big Hurt" tonight at 8 central, and again at 11. And again Friday morning at 6.