AU FOOTBALL: Tigers kick off spring practice

Auburn head coach Gene Chizik paced from field to field, drill to drill, feverishly working over his piece of gum and sizing up his new team in its first practice of the spring.

Defensive coordinator Ted Roof let out a triumphant shout as one of his linebackers burst out of his stance and jolted a teammate backward.

Wide receivers coach Trooper Taylor almost yelled his voice out trying to make his wideouts jump the snap. And when they did, they had up-downs waiting for them.

The 2009 football season has started. Kind of.

The Tigers practiced for the first time this spring on Tuesday in helmets and shorts. They went 24 periods, spending most of the time on individual and 7-on-7 drills.

And for Auburn’s new head coach, the day couldn’t come soon enough.

“Unbelievable. Just finally getting a chance to coach football,” Chizik said. “Just a great feeling, as it was for all the other players and the coaches tonight, too.

“We’ve been waiting for two-and-a-half months to do this.”

And, as Chizik and his coaches have stated many times before, nobody’s starting job is set in stone right now.

Chizik spent his time moving between position groups, getting a concrete look at the players he had mostly known only from paper before now.

He stopped off at the secondary, taking a moment to lay out some technique for a defensive back.

He stopped off at the quarterbacks, going to one knee to watch Kodi Burns throw out routes.

“This whole first week will be such an evaluation process right now with guys in the system both offensively, defensively and special teams,” Chizik said. “We know we have a lot of work all over our football team. It’s going to be really hard to pinpoint the places where we need it most.”

Even with an entirely new coaching staff, memories of the Tigers’ 2008 season, in which they missed a bowl for the first time since the 1999 season, were still fresh.

Taylor scolded his players for doing a drill wrong by shouting, “I’m not doing what I want to do when I want to do it, because then I’m 5-7 and I’m sitting at home for bowl games.”

“(The players) were on the Kool-Aid. The adrenaline was pumping,” Taylor said after practice. “They’re excited about the change. They’re excited about a new window, a new opportunity, a clean slate.”

And, judging by his performance at practice — enthusiastically reacting to the players’ ups and downs, handing out punishments for complacence liberally and even tangling with Tommy Trott in blocking drills — Taylor was plenty excited, too.

“They just got the grape Kool-Aid, they ain’t seen the red Kool-Aid. And they really don’t want me to break out that orange Kool-Aid,” Taylor said. “When I break out that orange Kool-Aid, they’ll be sorry.”

Chizik said he was pleased with what he saw from his team.

“I was really proud of the way the guys hustled around and really tried to be in tune,” he said. “Obviously, some parts of the day we were all over the place a little bit, but really proud of the way they tried to respond and practice and tried to do a good job of trying to soak up football and really listen and learn.

“That was really encouraging to see. I think it was a really good first day.”

dmorrison@oanow.com | 737-2568