re: Official 2014 Fall Training Camp/Practice Thread

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Do they really believe this?

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Yes. They never lose or outcoached.

Pretty good article on Gus after his Sirius XM radio interview, conducted by none other than.....Houston Nutt.

Phillip Marshall has a pretty good on one AUC too for any AUC subscribers.



Auburn coaches say 'nobody's figured this offense out' because it's in Gus Malzahn's mind

By Joel A. Erickson | jerickson@al.com
Email the author | Follow on Twitter
on August 19, 2014 at 11:03 AM

AUBURN, Alabama -- Every time Dameyune Craig sees a story on TV or a website about defenses catching up to Auburn's offense, he can't help but laugh.

Craig has spent more than a year watching Gus Malzahn work.

And Auburn's wide receivers coach has trouble believing defenses are inside the constantly calculating mind of Malzahn.

"Nobody's figured this offense out," Craig said. "It's in his mind."

Auburn's offense has been widely praised over the past year for its complexity, but the architect of the hurry-up, no-huddle insists his scheme is simple.

"We don't run a whole lot of stuff," Malzahn said on Sirius XM's College Sports Nation Monday. "The bottom line is we are going to run the power, the counter, the buck sweep and the inside zone. The rest is just window dressing."

Malzahn might be oversimplifying his scheme a little. With Nick Marshall at the helm, Auburn's devastating zone read -- a by-product of the inside zone, to be sure -- forces defenders to choose from as many as four possible plays in an instant. Offensive coordinator Rhett Lashlee calls it messing with a defense's eyes, making a simple play look complicated.

The men who hear Malzahn calling plays into a headset on Saturdays say he's also downplaying his own role in Auburn's offensive success.

"Gus is one of the best scheme guys that I've ever been around in all my, I guess this 38 years, and I've been around some pretty good schemers," Tigers offensive line coach J.B. Grimes said. "Getting the right blocking scheme, getting the right calls to make versus certain coverages, best I've ever seen."

Malzahn's playbook is built around his player's strengths -- for example, Marshall's ability to run the zone read or Cam Newton's proficiency at the inverted veer, an offshoot of the power -- and tailored to personnel on a year-to-year basis.

Calling those plays is a skill Malzahn's developed over two decades.

"He is really a gifted, gifted play-caller," running backs coach Tim Horton said. "He puts so much into it. As Coach Grimes likes to say, he's really good at his craft."

Malzahn's signature as a play-caller might be his determination to stick with what's working. In several games last season, Auburn whittled an entire game plan down to its base running plays in the first quarter, simply because the defense never stopped it.

A lot of play-callers feel the need to change things up to keep the defense off-balance. Malzahn doesn't.

"The ammo of the offense, if we're successful with a play, we just keep running it. ... A lot of guys run this play and then won't come back to it until the third quarter," tight ends coach Scott Fountain said. "He's the first that just constantly sticks with it."

In part, that's why Auburn ran the ball so much after the first bye week last season. Malzahn builds his offenses to be run-first, play-action teams, and the Tigers had so much success that there was no need to mix it up simply for the sake of change.

"When you cut him open, Gus really wants to beat you up," Grimes said.

And sometimes Malzahn's dogged determination to stick with his bread-and-butter has an ulterior motive.

"It's not that he sticks with the same play," Craig said. "It's that he's calling it for a reason."

Exhibit A: On Auburn's final offensive series of the Iron Bowl, the Tigers ran Tre Mason on the inside zone or the zone read six times in a row with the clock winding down. Even Lashlee has admitted he was thinking Auburn needed to throw.

Then Marshall kept the ball on a zone read and flicked the ball to a wide-open Sammie Coates for the game-tying touchdown.

Exhibit B: At the end of the second quarter of the SEC Championship Game, Malzahn called three tunnel screens to Sammie Coates on the same drive, and two lost yardage. Four series later, facing a 3rd-and-8 with a 45-42 lead, Marshall pump-faked a screen to Coates, then hit a wide-open Trovon Reed for 23 yards and a first down to keep the drive rolling.

"We have plays that we haven't even run yet, but they complement something else, and when the defense makes an adjustment, we already know what adjustment to make to what they do," Craig said. "I haven't been around a guy who's able to make adjustments that fast on the run during the course of a game."

Every once in a while, Craig says, Malzahn will pop into the headset and ask his assistants if they're ready to score a touchdown, because he's got the play for it.

More often than not, the next play ends up in the end zone.

"It's his offense, he created it, he knows the adjustments off of it, and he knows when to call them," Craig said. "Man, it's been fun to learn under him."

Good read

Chase Robinson DE that transferred here from Ttech has transferred to Akry State and play football there.

I think we'll do what we did last year. Let two or three get pretty much equal carries at the beginning of games and see who's hot. Then if somebody starts standing out then he becomes the guy.

What a badass

I think he should always get free fishing at Lanier myself...

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Malzahn will pop into the headset and ask his assistants if they're ready to score a touchdown,

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