MOULTRIE – Many people believe a long, successful coaching career for Bryce Giddens is in its infancy.

After just a year of working with the tight ends and offensive linemen at Colquitt County High, his alma mater, Giddens recently finished his first spring practice as a graduate assistant at Auburn.

Giddens believes part of the reason he was given the opportunity to work for Tigers head coach Gus Malzahn and veteran offensive line coach J.B. Grimes is that he has subscribed to a theory he learned a number of years ago: treat every day as a job interview.

The dedicated way he prepared and the hard-nosed way he played as an all-state center for the Packers and as a freshman starter at Arkansas State for Malzahn and Grimes made him an attractive candidate for the graduate assistant position.

Giddens started for two seasons at Arkansas State and in 2013 was named to the watch list for the Rimington Trophy, awarded annually to the nation’s top center. After several concussions led him to give up his playing career after just two seasons, he went into private business.

But he soon decided he wanted to get into coaching. The Packers’ Rush Propst jumped at the chance to have his only four-year starting offensive lineman return home.

Grimes, too, had positive memories of Giddens, who, in 2012, as a true freshman, took over the starting job in the first college game he played in and never relinquished it, more than holding his own against defensive linemen from the likes of Nebraska and Oregon State.

So when Grimes rejoined Malzahn in Auburn this year and was looking for a GA, he was glad to reacquaint himself with Giddens.

“Every day is a job interview,” Giddens repeated. “It’s something I tell my kids. Sometimes the high school and college kids don’t understand it. But it worked out for me.”

Giddens started 45 games for the Packers from 2008-2011 and only a lack of what many considered the necessary height kept him from going on to play at a Power 5 school.

Early in his first game at Arkansas State, he took over at center and held the job until forced to give up football.

While playing for the Red Wolves, he put to use what he learned playing for the Packers’ two well-regarded offensive line coaches: his father Kevin Giddens and Joey Bennett. It is the skills he learned from them and his innate work ethic that Malzahn and Grimes remembered.

The offer from Auburn and the decision to leave his hometown came just days before the Tigers started spring practice.

“It was spur-of-the-moment,” Giddens says. “I wasn’t necessarily looking. I was planning to stay in Moultrie and starting my coaching career.

“It happened in a couple of days. I went from going to work in Moultrie to packing my bags.”

But the chance to work for his former college position coach, Giddens said, was a no-brainer.

Grimes has more than 30 years of coaching experience. He has worked at Delta State, Louisiana-Monroe, Arkansas, Virginia Tech, Texas A&M, East Carolina, Mississippi State, Kansas, Arkansas State, Cincinnati, UConn and is now in his second stint on the Plains.

He has coached in 18 bowl games and helped prepare more than 50 players who have played on the offensive line in the National Football League.

“I had told my wife that if I ever had a chance to be an assistant with coach Grimes, I’d take it,” he said. And he will tell you why in an instant.

“He’s a fundamentals guy,” Giddens says. “He says blocking people is a lost art form. Every single day, he takes his guys out and puts them in a stance. He really focuses on how to block: the stance, the splits, the alignments. He says it’s the little things. He’s just a great teacher.”

But he’s more than that, Giddens believes.

“He’s old school in his coaching methods, but he has adjusted for today’s generation of football players,” Giddens says. “He’s adapted. And he builds relationships. Kids love playing for him. They love him to death.”

Auburn has several returning offensive linemen, including several that Grimes recruited during his previous stint with the Tigers.

“He’s got a lot of clay and he’s molding that clay the right way,” Giddens says. “I don’t know if he’s ever had a bad offensive line.”

Giddens says his transition to Auburn was helped by the time he spent at Colquitt County, especially last season while on the coaching staff.

“Coach Propst really prepared me for this,” Giddens said from Auburn recently. “It’s really not a lot different here.

“He’s trying to run Colquitt County like it’s a big-time college football program. So there wasn’t a big learning curve.”

Still, leaving his alma mater and his hometown was difficult in some ways.

“I knew in my heart how good Colquitt could be next season,” he said, adding that coaches nearly always find it difficult to leave players – and other coaches – with whom they have built relationships.

“But everyone understands.”

Especially understanding is wife Bryson, who is going through the couple’s fourth move in their five-year marriage.

“She’s supported me 100 percent,” he says.

Being gone for Auburn’s spring practice took Giddens away from 18-month-old daughter Baylor.

“That was hard,” he says

Now, close to being settled in Auburn, Giddens is working at those unseen, but important, off-season duties that must be done to help get the Tigers, who were 10-4 and the SEC West champions last year, ready for this fall.

“There is never nothing to do,” he says.