Bryan Harsin on what would make Week 1 successful for Auburn

Auburn head coach Bryan Harsin on Monday addressed the Tigers’ upcoming matchup with Akron — his first game as Auburn’s head coach — and expressed a sense of excitement for what’s to come in his first year at the helm of the program.

“Today is the guys’ day off,” Harsin said Aug. 30. “So looking forward to [ramping up practice]. Excited about game week here.”

Harsin and his coaching staff have had an eventful offseason, one that saw Harsin test positive for COVID-19 and draw criticism for his handling of vaccinations. Amidst Harsin’s bout with COVID, Auburn’s first-year defensive coordinator Derek Mason tested positive for COVID-19, too, prompting Mason to send a lengthy statement on Twitter.

Now, the coaching staff has returned to the field and will prepare to take on the Akron Zips on Saturday at 7:00 p.m. ET. Harsin on Monday discussed how to gauge success in his first-career game as Auburn’s head coach.

“Yeah, that’s a tough question,” Harsin said, when asked what would make him happy with Saturday’s result. “I think the No. 1 is that we had a successful game, we won the game. But really, right now, our focus is how do we prepare ourselves to have a good week of practice. I don’t want to put any predictions on the game only because I have no idea what we’re capable of doing this week just as far as how our focus goes and how we come out in practice.”

Auburn last season fired head coach Gus Malzahn after eight seasons at the helm of the program. The decision came less than 24 hours after the Tigers finished the abbreviated 2020 season with a 6-4 record, capped off with a 24-10 victory over Mississippi State. Harsin, previously the head coach at Boise State, was hired as Malzahn’s replacement.

“It could be our best week of practice,” Harsin continued. “I hope that’s the case. I hope our performance throughout the week of preparation shows up in the game and that we play good football and we don’t have a lot of mistakes that we can control. And we went out there and played pretty clean.

“[Akron is] obviously going to have things that we haven’t seen or maybe we haven’t prepared for and then we have to adjust,” Harsin said. “We’ve probably seen it somewhere along the way in camp from our defense or somebody on our team, special teams, offense-wise. It’s just a matter of recalling that, being able to make those adjustments as players and coaches.”