Brief meeting with head coach Tommy Tuberville today, although we didn't get any players because they had the day off due to the bye week.

Tuberville sounded encouraged with his team's play in a 17-13 loss to Georgia, but not satisfied.

"I think if you just look at individual efforts and playing offense or defense, we showed improvement," he said. "Of course, that's not what we're in for. We're in it to win games, and we felt like we could win it. "

Here are a few developments from the Sunday sitdown:

• Tuberville said RB Mario Fannin wasn't in the game the last two drives because Auburn had to go to the air and Ben Tate is better at pass protection. It seemed strange that Fannin, who scored the team's only two touchdowns and had 107 rushing and receiving yards didn't play, but it is believable that he's not up to speed on his pass protection, since he has only been at the position full-time for a few weeks.
  

• Still, if you need someone -- anyone -- to make a play in the final minute, don't you want the guy who scored your only other points of the day? I seem to recall Tate not doing much in terms of pass protection on the final play, when he was the primary target of a designed pass to the corner of the end zone.

• Tuberville on Fannin's running: "What they were doing, playing eight, nine man fronts, it was kind of like running into a wall most times. Even the touchdown we ran right into a blitz, we blocked it pretty good and he made a move and made a linebacker miss. Those are all well and good, but that doesn't happen very often."

• Other than his touchdown run, by the way, Fannin had seven carries for 24 yards. Not great, but not terrible.
  

• Of 119 Football Bowl Subdivision teams, Auburn ranks, as colleague and blogosphere extraordinairre Jay G. Tate says, buck-naked last in red zone efficiency, scoring on 57 percent of its times inside the 20. Nobody else is below 64 percent in the FBS.
  

• Nothing's wrong with senior RB Brad Lester, who had no carries Saturday after starting eight of the first 10 games. No injury. No doghouse. Nothing. He just wasn't in the game plan with Fannin and Tate in the mix. "(In the) doghouse you're locked up," Tuberville said.

• A couple injuries to report: PK Wes Byrum and TE Tommy Trott both suffered knee injuries against Georgia. Tuberville said Morgan Hull looks like he'll do the kicking against Alabama. "Unless (Byrum) makes a miraculous recovery," he said.

• Byrum's injury factored into Tuberville's decision to go for it on fourth down on Auburn's second-to-last drive when it was down 17-13. Instead of attempting a field goal from 40-plus, the Tigers went for it, throwing an incomplete fade pattern to Montez Billings in the end zone. "Morgan went out there and then, after he went out there and got to thinking about the scenario of him, first time being out there, I decided 'Let's not do this. Let's go for a touchdown,'" Tuberville said. "And they gave us a shot. We know they were going to give a chance to go deep because they'd been pressing us all night. A little bit had to do with Wesley not making the first one, then knee hurting him."

• Auburn went back to the huddle for the first time this year and seemed to do better with communication on offense. "The spread, no huddle – everything is put on the coach signaling," Tuberville said. "I just thought maybe people are reading our signals. You just take too many things for granted that if you're signaling and people are seeing what you're doing, you look too much in terms of reading what you can do. When you're huddling, only 11 people in that huddle know what you're going to do. ... I thought we looked better yesterday in huddling. Guys played more as a unit, as a group. Now there are times when you don't do it. We want to be able to do everything. We want to be able to huddle, not huddle, freeze at the line, signal plays in, go fast-paced. It give you a lot more options when you do that."