Alabama football’s Saturday matchup with Auburn in the Iron Bowl is important to all parties. It’s a game of crucial importance, both to the Crimson Tide for College Football Playoff purposes, and to fans, for statewide bragging rights.

But for a few members of the Alabama staff, the game could have some extra juice. On Monday, safety Malachi Moore was asked whether he expected Travaris Robinson, UA’s cornerbacks coach, to get any grief from his players.

Robinson played at Auburn from 1999-2002.

“We enjoy T-Rob a lot,” Moore said. “but we’re definitely going to be trash-talking him this week, the whole week.”

Robinson’s name made headlines earlier in the season, when Ole Miss coach Lane Kiffin made a show out of claiming he was calling the Crimson Tide defense, instead of defensive coordinator Kevin Steele. Nick Saban and Alabama’s players refuted Kiffin’s claims, but noted that Robinson still plays a huge part in Alabama’s defense.

“T-Rob, he’s been doing a great job,” Moore said. “He never lets us get too high on ourself. He’s always coaching us hard, always telling us that we can do this better or do that better, but he’s also our biggest cheerleader. I think the biggest thing that he’s done is he’s helped us learn a lot of offensive concepts, offensive formations, how the offense is going to attack you, getting extra work with our technique, coaching us up on our technique, just being a really good overall coach for us.”

Steele himself also has a different kind of connection to the Iron Bowl. He served as the Tigers’ defensive coordinator under Gus Malzahn from 2016 through 2020.

When Malzahn was fired, Steele served a stint as Auburn’s interim head coach and was reportedly a candidate for the full-time job before the Tigers hired Bryan Harsin. On Monday, Moore said he could see Saturday’s game having more meaning for Steele.

“I would say it probably does mean a little bit more,” Moore said. “Going back to where he coached at and playing them at their stadium. He’s definitely going to be a little more fired up than he already is.”

Alabama and Auburn are scheduled to kick off at 2:30 p.m. Saturday at Jordan-Hare Stadium. The game will be aired on CBS.