Bryan Harsin reveals what improvements he's looking to see prior to season opener

Bryan Harsin has a bevy of things he’s hoping to see Auburn improve upon ahead of the 2022 season.

Speaking with the media, the Tigers leader revealed the mindset he wants his players to have, and the little things he’s looking to get better at.

“Number one is awareness. That’d be number one. Just overall as a team. Running on the field and getting the signal,” stated Harsin. “We can have all these systems in place and I know our coaches do. I know our coordinators do. I sit there and I listen to them. I watch how they install the things that we need to put in. The system is exactly what it should be. But you’re dealing with people. So simple things like if you run on the field, you should look to the sideline to get the call. It’s an awareness thing.

“It’s a 4th and 2, you play that different than 2nd and 5. As a player, you have to look over there and see it’s 4th and 2. You’re going to get different play calls. You should expect certain calls in those situations. Even just in the meetings. Walking into a meeting. I think you all know, you walk into a meeting and you can kind of feel it like all right, we’re going to be locked in today. You can walk into a meeting and it’s a little bit more loose at times, and just some of that awareness that I think is really important for us, I think just as people to be successful, we need work on.”

Continuing, Harsin harkened back to a high school game he attended while making a point of how important timeouts can be to his team.

“Our operation from sideline, I was at — just kind of talking about some high school games from last night, I was talking to our team about that today. I watched high school teams from the sideline go out there and not have eleven on the field. They’ve got ten, or they’ve got too many. They’ve got to burn timeouts. That’s what happens in games. That’s the one thing that we don’t pay enough attention to, and just like that you’re burning through three timeouts in a quarter. You can burn through three timeouts in a quarter, then you don’t have them at the end of half,” said Harsin. “Now you make a stupid decision and you don’t have a timeout to cover yourself. We just had too many of those at practice. Twelve guys, ten guys. Just simple things that everyone’s like no big deal, just reload. We’re not at that point anymore. We’re not good enough to go out there and not have eleven guys on the field, everybody locked in, knowing the play and the signal and then just go out there and operate and expect to win that play. That’s really been the focus.

“Now thinking and playing. I know we can play, I’ve seen guys do that. We’ve got some guys that can play. I know we can think. Now can we think and play. That’s got to be, that’s what the game is. It’s a game of situations.”

Finally, the Harsin doesn’t believe in players just magically rising to the occasion. If you’re going to be a player for Auburn, you’re going to show what you can do in practice prior to the game.

“Three hours and 24 minutes, that’s the average length of a college football game. All right, so you’ve got to be ready for that. It’s really five hours and 20 minutes because you’ve got two hours early when you get there. So you’ve got to be able to focus and know what the heck is going on around you while everything’s crazy,” added the Auburn coach. “In practice — I don’t know how many fans and people we had there today, but it’s going to be a lot different on September 3rd. It doesn’t get any easier when the fans and everybody’s out there and that environment’s crazy. So practice is more controlled. If you have a hard time in practice, you’re not just going to rise to the occasion come game day.

“I think that’s the worst thing. It comes from a lot of people in the media and players and all, he just rose to the occasion. No, not really. You don’t do that. Usually that happens in practice and you train that way because you’ll fall right back onto your training. It’s already hard enough so trying to get guys to understand a little bit of well, I’ll just get there on game day and be ready to go, it’s not going to happen. You probably won’t be out there anyways because we hadn’t seen it in practice. Those are the things now for this team, what we have to focus on.”

Evidently, Bryan Harsin has some issues to iron out with his squad prior to their opening game against Mercer. Time will tell if Auburn is able to correct their faults, or if disappointment is on the horizon.