AUBURN, Ala. — Auburn coaches were adamant that there’s nothing wrong with quarterback Chris Todd’s throwing shoulder after the senior’s recent struggles.

“Chris Todd is fine,” Auburn coach Gene Chizik said Tuesday.

Todd had surgery on his right shoulder last December and has said he’s felt no ill effects from the procedure. However, his downfield accuracy has suffered the last two weeks against Arkansas and Kentucky, prompting speculation that all is not OK.

In the last two games, Todd’s completed only 48 percent of his passes for 213 yards, with no touchdowns and a pick. He completed 58 percent of his passes the first five weeks, with 12 touchdowns and one interception.

Offensive coordinator Gus Malzahn said Todd practiced Tuesday and looked “pretty good.”

“I think any quarterback in the country, Week 8, that’s thrown a little bit is maybe going to be a little bit different than the first game,” Malzahn said. “And I think he’s no different than anybody else.”

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• Auburn’s last trip to Baton Rouge two years ago wasn’t without controversy. That was the game right guard Chaz Ramsey cut LSU star defensive tackle Glenn Dorsey low while right guard Lee Ziemba blocked him high, an illegal chop block that set off a firestorm of criticism. Then-head coach Tommy Tuberville apologized afterward for the block, which he said involved no malice. Ramsey received no further punishment. A back injury he suffered later that year forced him out of football. He is currently suing former offensive line coach Hugh Nall and trainer Arnold Gamber for mishandling the injury.

• Ziemba, meanwhile, has become a cornerstone of Auburn’s line after moving to left tackle. Despite the incident, he doesn’t have any trepidation about going back to Tiger Stadium. “I don’t dread it at all,” Ziemba said. “I don’t dread going to play anywhere. But that was a good game my freshman year. I enjoyed playing there in that big stadium as a young’n. It was unfortunate what happened.” Dorsey was the fifth overall selection in the 2008 NFL Draft by the Kansas City Chiefs but has largely been a disappointment.

• Malzahn had no tolerance for the Tigers’ eight fourth-quarter penalties last Saturday, seven of which were against the offense and derailed two potential scoring drives. “It’s just discipline,” he said. “That’s all there is to it. That starts with me. I’ve got to make sure that never happens again. We’re going to do that. That was an undisciplined fourth quarter. We’re going to do better, I’ll tell you that.”

• How did Auburn go about eliminating those penalties Tuesday? “Up-downs,” Ziemba said bluntly. How many? “Enough,” Ziemba said.

• Down by seven and facing a third-and-6 situation late in the Kentucky game, Auburn coaches thought the play they called out of the modified “swinging gate” formation was sure to work. Instead, the Tigers got flagged for a false start penalty, backing them up five yards. Both Chizik and Malzahn agreed that the call was correct, but Malzahn was annoyed that the officials seemed confused about the unique formation, standing over the ball when the Tigers appeared ready to go. “You’d have to ask them. I have no idea,” Malzahn said. “It’s a play we’ve ran for about 15 years and never had that happen before, so I don’t know.”
  

• Asked if it would have worked, Malzahn said unequivocally, “There’s no doubt.” The procedure penalty backed Auburn into a fourth-and-11 situation. Todd’s pass to Terrell Zachery fell incomplete, leading to a turnover on downs.

• Chizik said linebacker Eltoro Freeman will play this week, but he did not specify in what capacity. The sophomore got in against Kentucky on special teams after missing the Arkansas game for personal reasons. Josh Bynes, Craig Stevens and Adam Herring were the only three linebackers to get in the game. “He may be in the rotation,” Chizik said. “He’s got to earn it.”

• Chizik on how the linebacker depth affects practice: "“It affects you on how you practice. That’s how it starts. It affects you on Sunday, and it effects you throughout the week. It affects you on special teams. (Bynes and Stevens) have been playing a lot of football and again I go back to games seven, eight, and nine, that’s where you see it. But they’re tough guys and they know our expectations of them and they can’t come out (of a game). They don’t have that luxury. I have to give guys like that a lot of credit, they’re playing the game and they can’t come out, that’s not easy to do.”

• Bynes and Stevens' iron man play is impressive to cornerback Walt McFadden. "I have a lot of respect," McFadden said. "Those guys come in week in and week out with bruises here, bruises there, and they don't complain. They just come out to practice and try to get better every day. Even though they may be hurting or have a little limp, they won't come in and complain to the trainers. They just get their own bag of ice and go home. That's just a lot of the respect I have for them, because they know that we need them and they know that they are also leaders. They basically are a big part of this defense."

• LSU had a bye week. Chizik thought this was the biggest advantage: “Time. In the NCAA, you only get a certain amount of time to prepare. When you stack two of those weeks together, especially study time for coaches, it’s not just about getting the players prepared on the field, it’s the invaluable time that coaches can really use to get different beads on offense and defense. I think that’s the biggest advantage, more than the extra practice time.”

• Auburn doesn't have a bye until after its Nov. 14 game against Georgia. “That can’t be a reason, we have got to go out and win football games," he said. "It starts on Sunday, and how many reps they get. Yesterday they had a day off, they got to rest. Now today, how much do we run them?

• There’s a really fine line for us right now, but it’s something that is on every coach’s mind, because we have to be very smart on how we run practice this late in the year.”

• McFadden commented on every LSU game seemingly coming down the wire. "My experience right now is if you win the last play, you win the game," he said. "That's my whole thing. If we can just go out there and play that last play, we'll win. The last three years, it's been a tough game. There's a lot of bruises and a lot of people come out of that game and won't be able to play the next week or later on. You've got to play 60 minutes against those guys because they play until the clock says zero-zero. That was our whole thing from last week, the reason we lost, we didn't play the fourth quarter. We know going into this game it's going to be four quarters."

• Malzahn said he's had to make big adjustments at his other stops too. "Yeah, I think any time you're with a new offense the first year, you're learning them," he said. "You're putting in what you think we can do successful -- what they can do successful. Each week, you're evolving to how you think the offense should be. To answer the question, yes. The same thing happened the first year at Tulsa and you've just got to make corrections. It's more about us just executing a little bit better. We had some opportunities and it's a fine line when you're playing good defenses. It's a fine line and you've got to be successful and hit a couple of those shots down the field to open everything else up."

• Ziemba on Tuesday's practice: "It wasn't physical but it was very mentally demanding. We brought our lunch box today."

• Ziemba had some good things to say that would have been good for my story tomorrow but came too late. " We're not down, we don't feel like we're in a corner," he said. "We're just ready to get back on track and that's what we're planning to do. We know we're a good football team. And we're just going to go out and prove it Saturday."

• Ziemba was asked if going from 500 yards a game to 300 is a sobering experience. "Sobering? That's not the word," he said. "The word is motivating. Go back out there and get to where we were."

• Tiger Stadium is going to be loud. Ziemba said he's heard louder before, though. "I remember the loudest place I ever played at was Florida my freshman year," he said. "That was unreal. I've either gotten used to it or just zoned it out, but you don't really notice it. There's not a big difference between 104,000 and 92,000. It all looks the same and it all sounds the same. It's just loud and you have to concentrate. It's really not that big of a difference."

• Auburn missed a ton of tackles in the fourth quarter last week. Bynes didn't really have an explanation as to why. "It wasn’t about fatigue," he said. "Making a tackle has nothing to do with you being tired. It’s how you tackle them, the way you tackle them. We were just missing them. We were there. It was `How in the world are do you miss them. Is it magic or something?’" Doesn't sound like they've got the whole operation corrected yet, does it?

• Bynes on how big a win this weekend would be: "It would be a big win, especially going into these last five games. These are a winnable five games. We could have won last week. We could have won the week before. But would’ve, could’ve, should’ve doesn’t win games."