Well, the good folks at Auburn's sports information department came through with a good group of afternoon interviews for us, including QB Kodi Burns, LB Chris Evans, DE Antonio Coleman and DT Sen'Derrick Marks.

Some highlights:

• Burns was mostly pleased with the way he played last Thursday. He graded out at 86 percent (since Tony Franklin was never big on grades, it's the first number Burns has had associated with his play this year).
  
  
• Burns, on the thinning out of Auburn's playbook: "We are definitely building back up. It wasn't so much just cutting a lot of things out. It was just we had the stuff that we could run, but we just kind of stuck to the basics and ran the stuff that we're really good at. I think the coaches as well as the players have a sense that we can get it done. We saw that in the first half of the West Virginia game, that we can open it up a little more."
  
  
• Hard to believe, but in nearly two years at Auburn, the West Virginia game was the first where Burns was allowed to play from start to finish.
  
  
• Talking to a few defensive players today, they didn't seem very pleased with how they played at West Virginia. However, "shocked" was not a term they used. "They came out the second half and put up points," Coleman said. "There's nothing to be shocked about. We came out flat and let them put up those points. There's no excuse for that. There's no reason to be shocked. We knew they had a good offense and they had a good team."
  
  
• The word swagger was thrown around a lot by the defensive players, which is something pretty indefinable, though Marks had a decent way of summing it up: "It's something you can get back. Swagger is the way you approach things. If you know all 11 guys are going to do what they're supposed to do then you feel like you got it back or you can go out and try to get it back. All it is is going out and being able to play like we used to do. ... We just need to get it back and have all 11 guys go out on the same page."
  
  
• Asked how he felt about leading the SEC in sacks, Coleman had a very terse response: "I don't care. It means nothing to me. I just get out there and try to make as many plays as I can. Like I told you before, that's null and void to me. Look at our season. We're 4-4. I couldn't care if I'm last (in sacks) right now. The stats and all that really has nothing to do with me and what I'm all about. I really don't care."
  
  
• The Ole Miss game is very important in terms of Auburn making a bowl game (this is assuming a win against I-AA Tennessee-Martin next week). A loss, and the Tigers would have to win one of their last two against No. 6 Georgia and No. 2 Alabama. That's a daunting task for a team playing well, let alone one struggling as bad as Auburn has.
  
  
• To wit, Marks on if he could have imagined a scenario where Auburn did not go to a bowl game this year: "I never would have thought of this. Even if we weren't in the top 10 (to start the year), even if we weren't projected to win our side of our conference, I never would have thought we would be in the predicament we're in now. ... I never would have thought we would be 4-4, just trying to get to a decent bowl game or trying to have a season where we could say, 'OK, we didn't do too bad, but we didn't do good at all."

I'm sure all Auburn fans feel about the same way right now.