Gus Malzahn threw a small wrinkle into the team's first scrimmage on Wednesday when he decided to allow the quarterbacks to go live and be tackled by the defense.
"I though it was very important especially when you are trying to evaluate four guys to give them a chance to make plays just like a regular football game," Malzahn said after the scrimmage on Wednesday.
Evaluating the four quarterbacks was a major emphasis for the coaching staff during the scrimmage and Malzahn decided that to allow them to start separating themselves from one another then they had to surrender the orange jersey for a blue one.
Prior to fall practice beginning, offensive coordinator Rhett Lashlee said the quarterbacks would not go live, but was overruled by Malzahn on Wednesday.
"I never said the plan wasn't to go live," Malzahn said. "When it's not live your blowing the whistle and you don't know if they can break a tackle, you don't know if they can escape pressure. The big thing is when you are evaluating four guys you have to narrow things down, and the way to do that is to go live. So I've done that before I just felt like it was important that we did that now."
When the news reached the players that the quarterbacks would be going live excitement filled the locker room, especially for the defensive players.
"We kind of heard it around the locker room, but seeing them put on the blue jerseys put a smile on our face as a defense," safety Jermaine Whitehead said. "It turns our whole defense up, you get to hit the guy that's been talking all that smack."
With a growing number of teams utilizing athletic quarterbacks in their offenses, today's scrimmage provided a great opportunity for the defense to practice defending that kind of offensive attack.
"It brings a new aspect to the scrimmage that's for sure, because I've never been in a scrimmage where the quarterbacks have been live before," linebacker Jake Holland said. "It kind of gives everything a game like feel and that's what they wanted."
Auburn ran 107 plays in the scrimmage and rotated three groups in and out.
The coaches will begin evaluating the film of the scrimmage tonight, and then the team will have two practices on Thursday.
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