Auburn notebook: Tigers keeping same practice routine

AUBURN — There’s nary a situation where Gene Chizik can’t make Auburn’s official motto of 2009, “Do What We Do,” work.

Heading into his first Iron Bowl as the Auburn head coach, Chizik had no trouble fitting it in Sunday when discussing how the Tigers will attack this week’s preparation for No. 2 Alabama.

Though the outside circumstances of this particular week and the perceived increased stakes in this 74th meeting of the in-state rivals tends to dictate otherwise, Chizik said the Tigers will carry on just like they have the previous 11 weeks.

“We’re more concerned with doing what we do,” Chizik said, “and not deviating from that.”

Auburn has every reason to tweak its schedule this week.

School is out for Thanksgiving break, so all the Tigers have on their schedule, feasibly, is football. The temperatures have dipped and the days are only getting shorter.

And it’s the Iron Bowl — the game of games on both teams’ schedules and an even more significant one for Auburn, with it being the 20th anniversary of the first-ever at Jordan-Hare Stadium, and all.

That’s all noise to Chizik, who said any extra time players want to spend at the Auburn Athletic Complex this week is “voluntary.”

“I’m not a guy that likes to vary off the things that we’ve done,” Chizik said. “We feel good about our preparation and how we do it. We’re at a point in the year where there’s not anything new you’re going to do. We’ve been doing it now going on 12 weeks.”

The only difference for the Tigers on Sunday was the length of practice. Typically a day where it goes about 30 minutes in no pads, Auburn went 90 minutes and donned shells after basically having the previous two days completely off.

“You hope that just mentally as well as physically that it was a good time to escape away from all this craziness here,” Chizik said. “I think it’ll be big.”

The time off was taken in different ways. Players like Ben Tate and Josh Bynes skipped town altogether, while offensive lineman Andrew McCain directed his focus toward everything that gets neglected during the football season.

“To have a couple days to worry about your academics or your girlfriend or whatever else you’ve got going on and really just kind of coming back with a fresh mindset and fresh approach, I think it’s really important,” McCain said.

The response Sunday night, however, was unanimous.

It helped.

“There was a lot of enthusiasm,” defensive coordinator Ted Roof said. “A lot of energy. You would expect that. Certainly, the Iron Bowl is as huge a game as there is in college football. I saw some guys with recharged batteries.”

Making ‘headway’: Chizik smiled and acknowledged the fact that he’ll likely be asked about the health of Eltoro Freeman every day until Friday, but he provided little clarity on the sophomore linebacker’s prognosis.

Chizik said he hoped to “run Freeman around” a bit at Sunday’s practice to see how he reacted. Freeman suffered a concussion and an apparent ankle injury last week against Georgia.

Freeman had been seen wearing a walking boot last week, but did not have one on Sunday.

“He’s made some good gains this weekend, I think,” Chizik said. “We’ll see and hopefully he has made some headway, and I think he has. Will it be enough? I don’t know.”

Among healthy scholarship linebackers, the Tigers have just freshman Jonathan Evans available to fill Freeman’s spot if he’s unable to play.

Who you root for?: Ben Tate had to pause and think about the question for a second.

Who will you root for in the SEC championship? Alabama or Florida?

The decision is not as clear-cut as one would assume.

“Of course, whoever goes to the national championship, you want the SEC team to win,” Tate said. “In the SEC Championship, I really don’t know. Maybe if we beat Alabama I’ll be like, ‘All right, Alabama let’s beat Florida.’”