Will idle week provide Auburn football with magic to snap three-game losing streak?

AUBURN — John Samuel Shenker told his Auburn football teammates to get their minds off football during the Tigers' idle week. The senior tight end, a captain on the team, then heeded his own advice.

"I went out to the farm and just relaxed and didn't have a worry," Shenker said. "... Step away, you don't have to do a lot. Just cause it wears on you week-by-week when you do certain things, the monotony of season, and just the trajectory of the season. Being able to step away and trying to refocus and getting back to doing things the right way."

Auburn (3-4, 1-3 SEC) will look to do just that when it returns to the field against Arkansas on Saturday (11 a.m., SECN) after a two-week break, hoping to snap a three-game losing streak. While the Razorbacks (4-3, 1-3) are also coming off an open date, breaks have traditionally worked wonders for the Tigers.

Since 2013, Auburn is 10-1 when it goes more than a week between games during the regular season. One of those wins, in fact, was perhaps the most famous in the entire history of the program.

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Across all of FBS, teams coming off an idle week are 38-31 this season, per teamrankings.com. However, they were just 90-105 in 2021.

"Stepping away from the game for two days last weekend and being able to think about something else, not worrying about getting ready for game or anything like that, it really does help," Shenker said. "You feel fresh when you come back to facility, feel like you're ready to go."

Through the years, the Tigers have seen what a week off can do for their psyche. In 2013, they lost their first road game at LSU. After an open-date week, they defeated then-No. 24 Ole Miss at home and went on to win their next nine games. That season had two idle weeks, with the second coming before Auburn's "Kick Six" victory over Alabama. The Tigers ultimately came within 13 seconds of a national championship that season.

In 2019, Auburn suffered its first loss of the season to Florida and walloped Arkansas 51-10 two weeks later.

It's unclear how much the Tigers' idle-week approach differs under coach Bryan Harsin from what looked like under Gus Malzahn. Harsin said Sunday's practice was longer than normal, the result of not having a game. But regardless of specific strategies, the intent is the same — refresh, refocus and get back to work.

"Good time for us to get healthy and do a lot of self-reflection," said senior linebacker Owen Pappoe, another captain. "Just looking in the mirror, viewing things we did wrong from the beginning of season and knowing what we needed to attack last week in practice."

Shenker alluded to this self-reflection, noting that "everybody's beat up physically but really mentally." It's easy to see why a team like Auburn — struggling to live up to preseason expectations, surrounded by turmoil — might welcome time to mentally reset, while a team on a roll would rather not have a break in its rhythm.

As far as the physical reset, both Shenker and Pappoe said the idle week allowed players to heal from the season's accumulated bumps and bruises. Pappoe, a self-described "rehab addict," went to massage therapy, cryotherapy and hyperbaric chambers — "really just everything to get back to close to 100% as I can." Harsin expects the team to be healthier coming out of the bye, noting "we'll get some guys back that we didn't have," while not naming specific players.

"The one thing about injuries, we only look at it as the players in the game, how it impacts the game, but it really impacts practice," Harsin said. "If a guy has to take reps and doesn’t have somebody to back him up and he’s getting double reps, pretty soon he fatigues and that’s going to cause injury down the road. Getting these guys back and really utilizing that bye week, I think it came at a really good time for us because we had some guys that were banged up."

It would be naive to expect last week's open date to make all of Auburn's issues magically disappear. But historically, off weeks have done the Tigers far more good than harm. They'll hope that holds true Saturday.

Jacob Shames can be reached by email at jshames@gannett.com, by phone at 334-201-9117 and on Twitter @Jacob_Shames.

This article originally appeared on Montgomery Advertiser: Auburn football can keep recent trend going with win over Arkansas