Gus Malzahn Offense: Gimmick or Just Two Sides of a Coin?

The 2010 season is less than two weeks away, and enough has been written about Auburn offensive coordinator Gus Malzahn's no-huddle, high-tempo offense.  But seeing as how many people are still calling it a gimmick and talking about its supposed weaknesses based on last season, I thought I should voice my own opinion. 

When Gus Malzahn arrived in Auburn, the near-mention of the word “spread offense” was enough to make most fans and media skeptical after the disastrous Tony Franklin experiment (and that was before most of them had gotten over the surprise hiring of a “5-19” coach). One should see all the responses by some writers and the media, proclaiming the demise of Auburn as long as Gene Chizik was at Auburn and Nick Saban was at Alabama.

The season started, and Auburn burst through the gates with five straight wins, topping the offensive rankings. And then, Auburn stumbled, losing comprehensively to Arkansas and LSU, along with close and heartbreaking losses to Kentucky, Georgia, and Alabama.

Now, sudenly, the Malzahn offense, which had been given a lot of praise, had become a gimmick, just relying on trick plays to make it through. Now, there should be no excuses for those losses. An inconsistent offense and a severely thin and inconsistent defense played its role in AU having the season it did.

Gus Malzahn runs a no-huddle spread offense and prefers to run it at good pace, as in 85 to 90 plays per game, focusing on gassing defenses out.

First, you need the right players to go through a right conditioning program to run that offense. With Auburn players already having gone through Franklin’s conditioning and now having to go through Malzahn’s, along with learning another new, more complicated offensive system, one should have expected such inconsistency. But in Malzahn's offense, heavy inconsistency comes at a price.

Now, the defense is spending more time on the field. That shouldn’t be too bad because Auburn's defense has been carrying the offense on its back for a while anyway right? It would be right if Auburn still had the same depth on defense like it did the years before. It is not news on how depleted the defense was already when Chizik took over.

Then came the inevitable injuries, and they came in heaps. Then came a point where Josh Bynes, Craig Stevens, and Jonathan Evans (true freshman) were about the only healthy scholarship linebackers Auburn had left. At safety, Daren Bates and Demond Washington (who was moved there from corner).

In fact, Arkansas and LSU were the only two games where the these issues weren’t the big reasons for Auburn performing the way they did. Let’s look at the Outback bowl against Northwestern an example:

Auburn was criticized by some writers and fans of opposing teams for giving up 650 yards to a mid-tier Northwestern, and it indeed was very un-Auburn. But one needs to take a closer look. Auburn’s first-team player had more talent and skills than the first-team players of Northwestern, both on offense and defense. But after that, not much.

The latter also ran a high-tempo offense of their own, executing over 100 plays against Auburn, led by a senior, NFL-caliber quarterback in Mike Kafka. The second-half of all the games had been Auburn’s bane throughout the season due to its lack of depth and it showed.

Now, most teams use the run to set up the pass, but Northwestern uses the pass to set up the run. Since they pass the ball quite a bit, it makes adequate depth in the secondary of utmost importance, but Auburn did not have any. By the fourth quarter, Auburn's defense was completely gassed.

I am not saying a no-huddle, high-tempo offense can’t be stopped from scoring, but without depth, even an inferior team running that offense can put yards on you.

Now, one needs to go look at how many unknown walk-ons were used on special teams, and all of it culminated in a still better-than-expected 8-5 season. No true Auburn fan is giddy over that result, but it still surpassed expectations for that year.

Now as far as the “gimmicky” aspect of the Malzahn offense goes, reverses, double-reverses, and pump fakes haven’t been called gimmicks for a while, neither is Malzahn their inventor. He did not invent the Wildcat, but simply perfected it. Unlike most spread offenses, his is still a run-first offense. He is very creative though, and likes to do the unexpected.

Sadly, people are easily willing to pass anything they don’t understand or anything that moves away from the conventional as gimmicks. Who knows, maybe it is, but I highly doubt it, and we will get the answer this upcoming season.

Malzahn’s offense is two sides of a coin because of what it does to its own defense due to inconsistency and what it does to opposing defense if executed with consistency. It DOES NOT, however, rely on a coin toss to succeed.

Even though not fully stocked, Malzahn (and Ted Roof) now has enough players to show what they and their systems are made of. No more excuses will be accepted from them if they don’t improve from their 8-5 season.

I still think we are two more top recruiting classes away from competing for the biggest prize at the biggest stage because of the amount of players we graduate after this season, but it would be unwise to write Auburn off on the basis of last season, and even more importantly for opposing defenses, unwise to call Malzahn offense a gimmick. WDE.