Year2 makes an earnest effort reading the tea leaves to figure out what Auburn intends to do on offense this season, now that Gus Malzahn is gone. Honestly, it all seems clear as mud to me – except for one thing.
… Chizik said the biggest differences in the offense will be much more frequent huddles and two-tight end formations and fewer shotgun snaps.
“Other than that, football is football,” he said. “Is that more of the standard in people’s eyes? Yeah, because you’re not no-huddling every snap and you’re not fast-pacing every snap. But you’ve got to remember, we didn’t fast-pace every snap last year. That’s the image and that’s kind of the impression but we didn’t do that every snap. We didn’t do it in 2010; we didn’t go fast every snap.”
Chizik never was comfortable with Malzahn’s emphasis on pace. He’s a defensive guy, after all. For him, a successful offense is as much about keeping the other team’s defense on the field as long as possible as it is scoring points. (And don’t forget his new defensive coordinator worked under a head coach in Richt who operates in much the same way.)
So I don’t think Loeffler’s talk about being multiple on offense matters much. As long as he can keep the chains moving, Chizik will deem the new offense a success. Scheme is nice, but the real question is whether Auburn’s got the talent mix on offense to make that a reality.
Get The Picture 
The gimmick fast-paced offenses don’t work unless you have some other built-in advantages (better shape or superior athletes). Heck, even when they had Newton, Auburn’s offensive pace wasn’t that impressive.
On the one hand, Auburn is not nearly big enough or physical enough on defense and doesn’t have the personnel for a pro-style attack. That could make for a very pleasant season for me.
On the other, given how they probably outperformed themselves in 2009 and 2011 when their offensive and defensive systems didn’t mesh, well, they should do at least as well this year.
Have a good day,
BD
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We may be quibbling over semantics here, DB – “gimmick” is a loaded term – but I’m gonna have to disagree with you a little bit about pace.
Exhibit A to my argument, believe it or not, is Georgia. Compare the offensive numbers of 2010 to those of 2011.
Also, Malzahn’s Tulsa offense led the nation in total offense both years he was there.
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GA ran 488 plays in 2009 and 2010, and 675 in 2011? Running more plays must have been all they thought about all offseason last year.
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I don’t equate “number of plays” to a gimmicky fast-paced offense. Sorry, wasn’t trying to insult the Dawgs. 🙂
At Tulsa, I would argue that Malzahn had a built-in advantage of superior organization and schemes – something that would work well in that league at that time. That wasn’t a built-in advantage in the SEC.
Although I’ve tried to erase the 2010 season from my memory, the remnants suggest that Auburn’s opponents simply could not stop Cam Newton. Yes, they rarely huddled, but I don’t recall the pace being furious. (That also doesn’t equate to dominating time of possession numbers because, I’m guessing, they had a ton of explosive plays.)
For the record, I place Clemson in the category of gimmicky offenses, too. Let’s see how that works without Boyd and Watkins.
Related to UGA, if they can establish a somewhat dominating run game to compliment Murray, I think you’ll like the results.
BD
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BD..When you say “a very pleasant season for me” I assume you mean Awbun will be undefeated before the last regular season game, then Bama will eviscerate them, rendering the previous wins meaningless.
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No way…you give me too much credit. A pleasant season for me would be Auburn losing every game (won’t happen, I know) and getting stomped in the last one. 🙂
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If Chizik is a defense guy who wants to control the ball, then why did he originally go with Malzahn as OC and Roof as DC? It looks more like he wanted to bring the Big12 to the SEC.
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Is it not reasonable to say that if you are playing teams that run “hurry-up”, you should get more snaps too–even if you don’t hurry? That can explain some of Georgia’s increase in plays ran last year. As more and more teams adopt the hurry-up style, less time is wasted and the saved time will be at least partially shared with the opponent….and if BOTH teams are hurrying, it decreases the wasted time even greater.
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Yeah, and an improved defense will lead to more plays as well.
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Au contraire, the D play can be matched with “three-and-out”s by the O.
Your turn.
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