Coffee and Magnolia: September 10th

It's Wednesday morning and we're not three days away from Auburn Tiger football. Hope y'all's bye week is treating you well.

The coaches, for one, are pretty happy with the bye week, as the head coach and both coordinators have spoken about their comfort with the extra five or so days of prep time they'll have. The practice schedule for the next week or so doesn't really look that different from what we see in a normal game week, as next week will begin with the regular Tuesday practice simply bumped to Sunday.

Rhett Lashlee spoke with reporters after practice yesterday, and hit on a number of topics in the 12 minutes video posted by Phillip Marshall. He said he has a ton of confidence in his starting quarterback, and that despite all the hype surrounding Nick this offseason, he still feels the quarterback is both very much the man for his offense, as well as a work in progress.

Lashlee called next week's Thursday night matchup a "measuring stick" for this football team, and is glad that the Tigers have plenty of big game experiences, especially those big games that have come away from home. Also, in a brief look back to last weekend's game, he sounded pleased with the third-and-short improvements from week one.

Joel Erickson posted his Film Study pieces looking at personnel and snap counts from the San Jose State game, and here's the offensive and defensive break downs. There's also an AL.com article featuring Malzahn talking about his incessant desire to get his offense to overcome annoying things like human fatigue and to keep getting faster.

As Auburn prepares for the scrambling and designed-run threat of the reigning Big 12 offensive player of the week, Ellis Johnson is working on getting his edge rush to be as impactful as his front-middle pressure has been. So far this year, Johnson said he's much more pleased with the "push" of his line than he is the "edge."

The official team site has a good memory lane article about the 2004 undefeated Tiger squad and their tenth anniversary celebration last Saturday.

Jeremy Henderson's quest to prove he can write interesting and humorous words about anything Auburn-related continued at The War Eagle Reader with an interview of the famous ball boy's high school football coach. Also, TWER's Wishbone podcast is back with a tantalizing headline about Duke and I'm gonna listen as soon as I finish writing this.

Auburn baseball is winding up for 2015 with fall practice getting underway (hallelujah!), and a lot of things will look different from the parking deck this year, primarily, the players. There's more than 20 newcomers to the Tiger roster, including 13 juco transfers who coach Sunny Golloway hopes will provide an instant lift to a club that struggled last season.

There's also plenty of returning talent, highlighted by several guys who played in very competitive summer leagues, and a few even made their league's respective top prospect list (if you're a BA subscriber you can read about them).

The best interview poster of them all shared with us a couple of clips of Golloway and the SEC's leading returning hitter, Jordan Ebert talking about the fall camp getting underway. Wesley Sinor of AL.com was also on the Plains for the opening of camp, and posted a few thoughts along with some quotes and a picture slide show.

In other Auburn news, the volleyball team is 3-3 heading into hosting a tournament this weekend that will see them take on Troy, Winthrop and South Florida, with the latter two games airing on SEC Network Plus.

The soccer team is 5-1 and ranked for the first time since 2012. The Tigers sit at No. 18 in the NSCAA poll this week.

Apparently the University is going to fit new classroom buildings into the green space in front of RBD on Mell Street. At first I thought they meant the College Street side which would be devastating news for me and a host of tailgaters partial to the corner of Roosevelt and College, but if it's just the campus side of Mell all I can say is good luck fitting them in and good riddance to Haley.

Finally, the folks at the Montgomery Advertiser were a little ticked off over an apparent miscommunication between Malzahn's people and The Gump's QB Club. They even ran an editorial with what I see as an inexcusable typo ("Wish I had of been") if you're trying to criticize one of the two most famous people in the state right now. But I've got no side in the fight. I've been turned down by athletes and coaches for pictures and autographs as a fan and turned down for pictures and questions as a writer and neither is fun but both come with the territory of trying to gain access to a major D-1 football coach. Whether it should or shouldn't be that way, it is. Maybe other people here have more insightful additions to this conversation than I.