AUBURN, Alabama — Smile, Gus Malzahn, the Iron Bowl is almost there.

The fifth-year Auburn head coach has been much more jovial since Auburn’s victory against then-No. 1 Georgia two weeks ago and it’s a scene not lost on the players who spend hours with the coach on the practice field each week, especially this one leading up to the biggest game of the year: a winner-take-all Iron Bowl against No. 1 Alabama.

“A smile on his face all the time,” Auburn safety Tray Matthews said. “Messing around with us a little bit, that’s the loose Gus.”

No. 6 Auburn (9-2, 6-1 SEC) enters a showdown with No. 1 Alabama (11-0, 7-0) with a lot of heavy lifting on the horizon Saturday at 2:30 p.m. CT inside Jordan-Hare Stadium. This Alabama defense is the best in the country and a 24-game winning streak against SEC opponents is definitely not part of the light-hearted, jovial conversations Malzahn has been having lately wit his team.

This Alabama game is serious business, of course, but Auburn has played at its best over the last four weeks by playing loose and treating Saturdays as the culmination of hard work in practices rather than a time to be in a dead-serious mood.

“We need to be loose,” Malzahn said. “We play our best when we’re loose. Our coaching staff needs to be loose. I need to be loose, and I’m going to. I’m real proud of our team getting us to this point. They’ve earned that. I want them to enjoy it.”

Auburn players embraced the loose approach against Georgia. Players danced on the sideline before kickoff and well after the 40-17 victory. The dancing spilled on the field late in the game, leading to players nearly missing their alignments at the respective positions before the snap — Auburn was leading 40-10 at the time.

“We were dancing and we were kinda expecting [Malzahn] to say something but he looks at me and kinda like gave me the thumbs up, so I have all the other guys dancing with me,” Matthews said. “That started the whole little trend.”

Malzahn has joined the dancing festivities — yet. He did perform a “dab” during his post-game speech following a victory in the Birmingham Bowl in 2015, but any dance moves have been left for sleuths to discovered on the Internet. The video and GIF of Malzahn break dancing in a video produced at a Six Flags theme park in the early-to-mid-1990s is is still al the rage.

RELATED: Dance party never ended against Georgia

Auburn hopes that energy translates to the Iron Bowl, but they do so without loosing concentration and missing assignments against the best team in the country.

“First off, we’re playing at home in front of the crowd, so we’re going to be loose,” Matthews said. “We’re going to have a lot of fun dancing and getting after the ball. But our backs are against the wall — but we actually don’t have anything to lose. We do have a lot to use, but at the same time we don’t have anything to lose, if you get that. Because Alabama, they’re No. 1, they’re winning in this series that we have going on. We just have to play loose and have fun.”

For Malzahn, this is Game 5 in the playoff for the Tigers, who couldn’t afford a loss following a 27-23 collapse at LSU in mid-October. The Tigers have won every game since them and has done so handily.

“I’m really proud of our team, the character of our team, the adversity they’ve overcome,” Malzahn said. “People talk about the playoffs. We’ve been in the playoffs for four weeks. All that stuff about the top 4 and all that, crud, man, it’s been playoffs for four weeks.”

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