Auburn Football: What Negative Effect Will the High Tempo Offense Have?

After publishing the most recent article explaining offensive tempo, there was a need to explain the defensive cost of this type of play. I will attempt to explain those cost in this article in a simplified way.

In this article , I made an attempt to outline the advantages of a high offensive tempo. As in anything, where there is reward there is risk. This is also true of the up-tempo offense.

The highest tempo on offense Auburn faced last season was the Northwestern team. They ran well over 100 plays on the Auburn defense. There is no doubt that the Auburn secondary was absolutely gassed at the end of this game. 

Auburn's linebackers looked to be in slow motion at times, due to the severe fatigue. The defensive line seemed to take the pace better as Northwestern was not a huge rushing threat. What effect did this pace have on the Northwestern defense?

Auburn had 14 possessions during this game. Auburn scored on six of these possessions. One of these scores was not on the Northwestern defense. That leaves five scores on the Northwestern defense. Four were touchdowns and one a field goal.

Auburn ran 72 plays in this game. This is quite average. Auburn was running the slower game tempo switched to at mid season. Auburn ran 59 plays against Alabama and 66 plays against Georgia. 

Six of the plays against Northwestern were in overtime. That leaves 66 regulation plays. This is the same number as Auburn ran against Georgia. It appears that the Northwestern defense faced no more pressure than they would have on any regular game.

While there is the perception that the increased number of possessions by the opponent leads to more plays for the defense to deal with. This is not usually true when playing a traditional ball control offense.

The traditional ball control offense is attempting to slow the game down. This usually leads to conservative play calling and more three and outs. Auburn ran about the same amount of plays against Northwestern as Penn State, Iowa, and Wisconsin.

With Auburn attempting to slow the game and control the time, Northwestern used the up tempo offense to give them a chance at winning. Their offense was not that effective against Auburn in the early part of the game. By late in the game the Northwestern offense was able to tie the game and have a chance to win. 

This was the same strategy Northwestern used against Penn State, Iowa and Wisconsin. All were top 25 teams and Northwestern won two of the three games. There is no doubt the higher tempo offense equalized the talent differential in these games.

This tells us that the up tempo strategy is very effective against traditional ball control offenses. What happens when two up tempo offenses meet? Houston ran the highest tempo offense in the nation for 2009. Let us take a look at them.

When Houston played Tulsa in 2009 it was a meeting of two of the highest tempo offenses in the nation. Houston ran 100 plays on the Tulsa defense. They scored 46 points. Houston had 711 yards of offense. What did this cause the Houston defense to face?

Tulsa ran 68 plays in this game. They scored 45 points and accumulated 570 yards of offense. While the plays Tulsa ran were effective, they were still limited to 68 total plays. 

The reason there is not a huge rise in the number of plays for an opponent it the time differential. In a perfect game there is time for about 200 plays. No game is perfect, so that number ends up being about 165 to 175 in actual execution.

If Auburn runs 95 plays per game in 2010, that only leaves 80 plays for the opposing team if they run at the highest tempo. In fact for most SEC teams the total opponent play count is likely to be in the 65 to 75 range at best.

The up-tempo offense has traditionally been used to equalize talent. The talent that existed was put on offense and the tempo raised to take pressure off of a largely average defense. No huddle offenses are used in the same way in the NFL. 

There has never been a team as talented as the 2010 Auburn Tigers attempt such a feat. Auburn will be talented, strong and deep on both offense and defense. Turning the tempo up to 95 plays per game could actually take pressure off the defense.

With the extreme fatigue effect the Auburn offense will be having on opponents defenses, they will be trying to slow the game down on their possessions to let their defense recover some. It is simply a matter of strategy in the individual game.

The Auburn defense will face more home-run and desperation plays when running the up tempo offense. Opposing teams will be forced to employ these types of plays to simply keep up offensively in the game. While this will mean more successful long plays it will also mean more interceptions and turnovers.

This is one effect that is little talked about. The up-tempo offense forces less conservative higher risk play calling from an opponent. For a talented defense like Auburn will field in 2010, this could be another big asset. 

Auburn did not have the right mix of players to run this type of tempo in 2009. Many of the defensive players were true freshmen that simply had not been able to condition to the extent needed to play an SEC schedule. 

With the coaching staff talking about going to this level of tempo in 2010, it means they think the right players are available. This can only be good news for Auburn fans. 

In fact one only needs look at time of possession to see if the defense is on the field longer. In the majority of cases the higher tempo offense has the advantage in time of possession. In the worst of cases the high tempo offense resulted in a two minute time of possession advantage for the opposing team.

The biggest problem with a high tempo offense is that it must be effective. The Auburn offense had times where it was simply ineffective in 2009. This was not due to the game tempo, but the poor execution of plays.

There also seemed to be a little let down when Auburn got a lead in 2009. The players simply did not play as hard when 14 points ahead. For the high tempo strategy to work they have to play hard every possession. 

There is no such thing as enough points to win. If a team is to control the game with the offense, it must do that every play. When the Auburn offense is not executing the opponents offense will be.

This is all part of establishing a winning, champions attitude at Auburn. A lack of this mind set cost Auburn games last season. If the Auburn offense had played their best every play last season, Auburn would have won three more games.