Auburn's first fall practice got off to an interesting start on Friday, Aug. 2, after head coach Gus Malzahn announced that red-shirt freshman tight end Ricky Parks will no longer be on the team because of a violation of team rules.
"Like I've said before we have high expectations for our players on and off the field and we wish him nothing but the best," Malzahn said.
Parks was expected to compete for playing time this fall even though he was playing behind junior tight ends CJ Uzomah and Brandon Fulse.
While this is not the best way to start a new football season, overall Malzahn felt that his first fall practice went well.
"It was really great to be out on the practice field with our players," Malzahn said "Our coaches were extremely excited and our players were too. It's something we've been looking forward to, and they've worked extremely hard to get to this point."
Not all of the first practice went smoothly though. Malzahn said that the quarterbacks had some mishaps, but that it was good for them to get that out of the way early in fall camp.
"There's nothing like making mistakes and learning on the practice field and not in the game," Malzahn said.
Right now all of the quarterbacks are getting equal opportunity to prove themselves and Malzahn says they will do that as long as it takes.
"The first part of practice we let the two new guys sit back and see how everything went, and the second part we let them get all the reps," Malzahn said. "Overall, I think they were pretty equal."
Sophomore offensive lineman Greg Robinson felt like the rest of the team handled the first day of practice well, even though a lot of pace was thrown their way.
"Everybody was encouraging one another trying to push each other to make sure that nobody falls apart," Robinson said. "We had a lot of pace today, but we are trying to get our edge back."
Malzahn divided practice into two sections, with the first focusing on older players and the second focusing on the younger players.
Auburn will practice the same way again Saturday afternoon.
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