There was a stretch of time in which Auburn’s defensive backfield was razor thin.

The Tigers first lost starting defensive back Keionte Scott, who suffered a high-ankle sprain early in Auburn’s game against Samford on Sept. 16. Scott’s injury ended up requiring tightrope surgery, sidelining the junior for about a month.

Then against Georgia on Sept. 30, veteran cornerback Jaylin Simpson left the game in the fourth quarter, never to reenter with a lower leg injury of his own. And it was Simpson’s absence that helped pave the way for Georgia tight end Brock Bowers to go on a tear, setting up the Bulldogs’ go-ahead touchdown in the fourth quarter.

With both Scott and Simpson banged up heading into the bye week, the tandem spent a lot of time together.

“I had to go to the training room and do things with him when my leg was hurt so we were both kinda doing the same exercises,” Simpson said Tuesday.

In his fifth and final year on The Plains, Simpson wasn’t in the best headspace when he went down with an injury against Georgia.

But fortunately for him, he had Scott to pull him out of the rut.

“I’d be out there like, ‘Man, my leg is hurtin’, bro. I don’t know…’ And he’s like, ‘one percent’,” Simpson said. “He just kept saying, ‘one percent, one percent’, which means just like, one percent better every day. Just get one percent better.”

It was a nagging calf injury that kept Simpson’s availability up in the air as Auburn’s game at LSU approached.

In the Monday leading up to Auburn’s game against LSU, head coach Hugh Freeze said Simpson was “day-to-day”.

And without Scott there to help him along, Simpson is convinced he might not have played in Baton Rouge two weeks ago.

“He helped me get back on the field earlier than I probably would have,” Simpson said of Scott. “If it wasn’t for him, I probably wouldn’t have been out there for that LSU game.”

While Simpson played a majority of the game against LSU, it wasn’t until last week that Scott returned to action, first appearing during Auburn’s practice on Oct. 17 — making for an impressive, 29-day post-op turnaround after having surgery on Sept. 18.

“He came back fast. But I’m not surprised he did what he did because he was just on it every day,” Simpson said of Scott. “I was hurt when I heard he was out and having surgery and all that because you never know how long that stuff can take. I’m just real proud of him for sure.”

Having Scott back certainly helps Auburn on the field as Scott starts in the defensive backfield and as one of the Tigers’ staples at punt returner.

But the junior defensive back’s biggest upside might come from what he offers from a leadership standpoint.

“Keionte Scott changes our team,” Freeze said last Thursday in his weekly appearance on Auburn’s Tiger Talk radio show. “And he’s been back around us this week and he just picks everybody’s spirits up. He really does, particularly defense.”

And Simpson is proof of that.

“I know he wants to be out there just as bad as me, so let me just get my mind right,” Simpson remembers thinking to himself. “I mean who knows, maybe I still would’ve had a bad mindset if he wasn’t there with me… That’s why I give him a lot of credit for my return.”