It was HOT out there today for the first practice of two-a-days. Don't know how Auburn practiced in heat like this. I can see why the Tigers keep pushing things back to the evening. We braved the heat for a half an hour worth of notes and observations. Here they are:

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• After a full-pad practice last night, Auburn was in shorts with no shoulder pads today. Will go full pads tonight.

• WR Trovon Reed (pictured right on a previous day) didn't work out with the rest of the team on the field. It didn't look like there was anything wrong with him, but he stayed in the John H. Watson Fieldhouse with DeAngelo Benton. I did hear the sound of a JUGS machine in there, though.

• Benton, by the way, was not dressed. Cast still on his hand.

• OL Jorrell Bostrom was over at Muscle Beach today. To reiterate this point: this is NOT the place you want to be during practice. The weight work and sit-ups he was doing looked awful.

• Auburn's big players practiced receiving short kickoffs today. It was interesting to see guys like Jeffrey Whitaker, Joel Bonomolo, Corey Lemonier and Kenneth Carter, among others, catching kicks, but they looked pretty good at it. Didn't see a drop.

• Here is an extremely broad list of players who were doing kick return drills: Reed, Mario Fannin, Terrell Zachery, Onterio McCalebb, Ryan White, Michael Dyer, Neiko Thorpe, Demond Washington and Antonio Goodwin.

• Saw one drop from the group: Washington. After going again, he dropped and did 10 pushups.

• S Ikeem Means was favoring his right knee a little bit. The trainer looked at him briefly, but Means returned to the practice.

• PK Chandler Brooks looked shaky on the field goals again. He shanked the second-to-last one pretty bad. Hit the final one with players in his ear, though.

• Scouts from the St. Louis Rams and Houston Texans were on hand. Wayne Bolt chatted them up.

• Trooper Taylor gave his daily Trooperism. During stretching, he yelled out to offensive guard Mike Berry, "Mike Berryyyyyyyyyyyyy! Mike Berry!" to that Eric Berry song from Tennessee last year.

• Our moment of the day (and this speaks volumes for how little went on during the viewing period): Special teams coordinator/tight ends coach Jay Boulware was displeased with the effort of two of his players -- Dakota Mosley and walk-on Bradley Seals. So he had them start up-downs, while running in place in between. They kept going ... and going ... and going. A couple times they stopped, thinking they were done, but that only made Boulware have them go longer. At one point, he yelled at Mosley, who was Dyer's high school teammate, "You going to quit already, Arkansas?" They probably did 20-plus up-downs, which is not the way you'd like to start a day of two practices.

I'll be back with more after we do some post-practice interviews.