Hope we rush for 400 on Miss St

[TexasTiger 12,810]

http://www.al.com/au...c_defenses.html

Auburn's hurry-up, no-huddle offense keeps evolving as SEC defenses race to catch up

Corey-Grant-Bray-Dismukes-Ray-celebration-Bennett.JPG

Teammates celebrate Auburn running back Corey Grant's touchdown during the first quarter Saturday, Nov. 16, 2013, at Jordan-Hare Stadium in Auburn, Ala. (Julie Bennett/jbennett@al.com)

PrintJoel A. Erickson | jerickson@al.com By Joel A. Erickson | jerickson@al.com

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on July 28, 2014 at 3:23 PM

HOOVER, Alabama -- Reese Dismukes isn't really sure what all the fuss is about.

Two weeks ago, Auburn's center found himself peppered with questions about Gus Malzahn's hurry-up, no-huddle offense at SEC Media Days.

The bulk of those queries asked essentially the same thing: With an offseason to study the Tigers' running game, will SEC defenses start catching up to Malzahn's attack?

Dismukes has a hard time believing there's any mystery to Auburn's method.

Auburn center Reese Dismukes talks to the press during SEC Media Days Monday, July 14, 2014, in Birmingham, Ala. (Julie Bennett/jbennett@al.com)

"I think there's some things in the backfield that might confuse some people, but at the end of the day, we're running the football between the tackles," Dismukes said. "I don't think there's anything confusing about that."

At least one of Auburn's SEC foes agrees with Dismukes.

Mississippi State's Bernardrick McKinney, the leader of the only defense to hold Auburn to less than 200 rushing yards last season, felt like he had a great grasp on the Tigers' vaunted rushing attack.

The Bulldogs played Auburn early in the season, long before the Tigers started emphasizing the zone read that Nick Marshall and Tre Mason made so deadly toward the end of the season.

Even after that shift in emphasis, though, McKinney would watch Auburn's games on TV and wonder why teams were having so much trouble.

"Me personally, I knew every run they were going to run before they ran it, just seeing what motion they do," McKinney said. "When they were playing 'Bama, we were sitting at home, and I was saying, oh, they're fixing to run the zone."

Stopping Auburn's running game down the stretch was another matter entirely.

Auburn rolled up 323 rushing yards against Georgia, 296 against Alabama and then blew the lid off the Georgia Dome with an unprecedented 545 yards against Missouri in the SEC Championship.

All three teams entered those games with rush defenses ranked in the top 20. In the national championship game, Auburn's 232 rushing yards doubled Florida State's defensive average for the season.

Auburn was so dominant down the stretch that rival coaches like South Carolina's Steve Spurrier and Missouri's Gary Pinkel have spent the offseason studying the Tigers' offense in an effort to find concepts they can incorporate into their own systems.

"When somebody runs up and down the field no matter what the other team does, you try to figure out how they're doing it," Spurrier said at SEC Media Days.

Both Dismukes and McKinney are right.

Diagnosing Auburn's play selection isn't necessarily the problem. With a dynamic rusher at quarterback in Nick Marshall, Auburn focused heavily on the inside zone and the zone read last season and largely kept the attack between the tackles, save for the jet sweeps that have always been a staple in Malzahn's offenses.

Figuring out where the ball is going after the snap is much harder to do.

Auburn forces defenses to pick their own poison. By adding the threat of the throw -- on "package plays," Marshall has the option to throw the ball off of the zone-read action, like he did on the game-tying touchdown pass to Sammie Coates in the Iron Bowl -- the Tigers allow Marshall, an adept ball-handler, to attack a defense's weakest point on any particular play.

"The way they run their offense, they've got a two-man, sometimes three-man system. They can hand the ball off, keep the ball or even dump the ball off. It's three plays in one," Tennessee linebacker A.J. Johnson said.

And the Tigers don't have to rely on the zone read and the inside zone alone.

Malzahn builds enough wrinkles into his offense -- the quick huddle, Corey Grant's speed sweeps, wide receiver reverses, straight play-action into a pass play off the zone read action, to name a few -- that when defenses adjust to defend the zone read, the Tigers always have a counter.

"We have so many plays out of formations that look the exact same, and it's really hard to game-plan something like that," Auburn tight end C.J. Uzomah said. "It's really hard to say, we're going to stop this play, and then all of a sudden, they're not doing that play, and we've left our defense vulnerable."

Down the stretch, teams largely tried to force Auburn's hand by assigning two defenders to attack Marshall on the outside, forcing the quarterback to hand the ball off to the running back inside.

Malzahn has a couple of counters in hand for that strategy. Out of Auburn's H-back role, Jay Prosch often served as a personal protector for Marshall outside last season.

But the Tigers' offensive line is the real key, as Dismukes pointed out at SEC Media Days. Unlike true spread teams, which build their running games around draws and counters, Auburn's offensive line is taught to play power football at the line of scrimmage, and the Tigers dominated opponents at the point of attack last season.

No matter how many options are built into each play or how the Tigers line up in their shotgun formation, Auburn's offense is a power attack at its core.

Vanderbilt's new head coach, Derek Mason, who built a reputation for bringing spread attacks like Oregon's and Arizona State's to their knees during his time as Stanford's defensive coordinator, didn't see much difference between Auburn's hurry-up, no-huddle and a traditional power attack when he studied the film over the summer.

Auburn quarterback Nick Marshall (14) passes to Auburn wide receiver Sammie Coates (18) for a touchdown Saturday, Nov. 30, 2013, during the fourth quarter of the Iron Bowl at Jordan-Hare Stadium in Auburn, Ala. (Julie Bennett/jbennett@al.com)

"I shouldn't say it's changed, the package has changed," Mason said. "When you look at a team like Auburn, how they run the football, it's no different than Alabama, they just do it a different way."

And there's one more secret to Malzahn's success.

The hurry-up, no-huddle's core plays are always changing to fit Malzahn's personnel. In three years as Auburn's offensive coordinator, Malzahn built three very different offenses, all built to highlight the skills of his starting quarterback.

With Marshall back -- the first time Malzahn has had a returning starter at quarterback at the collegiate level -- Auburn's 2013 offense will likely be rooted in the same concepts this season, but Malzahn has already promised the Tigers will throw the ball more in 2014.

Based on Malzahn's history at the college level, that likely won't be the only wrinkle added to Auburn's offense in 2014.

"I definitely think he has enough tricks in his bag to where nobody should be able to adjust for 50 years," Uzomah said.

[Randman5000 4,224]

I got a hunch that game is going to be barn burner.

[dmoney 271]

I hope we break 600 yards. Its easy to watch tv and say what you would do. Its different when you are on the field.

[AU-24 3,063]

McKinney said. "When they were playing 'Bama, we were sitting at home, and I was saying, oh, they're fixing to run the zone."

Really McKinney? Brilliant, simply brilliant!

[Dual-Threat Rigby 8,641]

If we really tried to run last year, I wonder if we could've hit 500 rushing

[JDUBB4AU 5,102]

McKinney really figured it out

[Dom1ni0n 51]

Doesn't matter if we have 400 passing, rushing, I just want to see the mud mutts catch the 3 touchdown beatdown that was ZipLock labeled and held on ice for them from '13.

[AU64 10,122]

McKinney really figured it out

Yep....like FSU...best defense in the land and had a month to prepare for AU. They did a good job keeping AU under control but still.....and at best, MSU has half the talent of FSU.

AU goes to State with a mature team, an experienced QB, etc....I could be wrong of course but I don't think this year's game will bear any similarity to the 2013 game.

[gravejd 3,269]

We need to put a good beating on MSU. We've beaten them the last few years but they have always been close games. They did do better then just about any one at slowing down our offense last year and the year Cam was here (2 of the best offensive years in AU history). Unfortunately I think they will find it a bit harder to do this season as AU won't be in "trying to figure it out" mode when we play them. They've had the good fortune of playing us early for much of the past decade and we have had a new QB pretty much every year during that time. Not so this year!!

[lca408 366]

I think it's probably relatively easy to figure out which plays we were running. I mean, we really only ran about 3 or 4 different running plays last year, we just could switch it up with personnel and a little different motion here and there. Teams knew what we would run and they still couldn't stop it. Why? Because we out-executed just about everyone. The level of execution, especially being run at such a fast pace, made it impossible for any defense to "shut us down." MSU had great success against us early in the season because we hadn't yet developed an identity - a common theme for Malzahn coached offenses - it seems to take 2 or 3 games before they find their niche and run with it. Mostly I think that has to do with new QBs and personnel. The transition shouldn't take as long this year with so much coming back from 2013.

MSU can talk all they want about knowing what we're going to run and maybe they're right. It's not like there's a magic formula to figuring out this offense. It's just like any other offense - if you can't execute it correctly, it doesn't work. Auburn can execute this thing like a well-oiled machine and do it at break-neck speed. We could probably hand MSU our playbook before the game and they still wouldn't shut us down. There's no defense for an offense that out-executes everyone, especially with alot of talent, run at that fast pace, and after 5 games where that team has developed an identity and momentum. By the time we play MSU this year, I think we'll be in good shape to take control of that game early.

[McLoofus 35,182]

We need to put a good beating on MSU. We've beaten them the last few years but they have always been close games. They did do better then just about any one at slowing down our offense last year and the year Cam was here (2 of the best offensive years in AU history). Unfortunately I think they will find it a bit harder to do this season as AU won't be in "trying to figure it out" mode when we play them. They've had the good fortune of playing us early for much of the past decade and we have had a new QB pretty much every year during that time. Not so this year!!

Spot on. Ditto for LSU, at least last year.

[auburntiger1987 759]

The thing that made it even close was not having tape of Dak. He's not sneaking up on anyone this year and I expect him to do worse. They will be leaning on their defense to keep them in games. If we're running our offense well, its not going to be close.

[keesler 5,924]

We need to put a good beating on MSU. We've beaten them the last few years but they have always been close games. They did do better then just about any one at slowing down our offense last year and the year Cam was here (2 of the best offensive years in AU history). Unfortunately I think they will find it a bit harder to do this season as AU won't be in "trying to figure it out" mode when we play them. They've had the good fortune of playing us early for much of the past decade and we have had a new QB pretty much every year during that time. Not so this year!!

Spot on. Ditto for LSU, at least last year.

God we owe LSU a beating in the worst way. This is the year Gus humiliates Chavis' defense - I can feel it coming. WDE!

[eibua12 81]

Everyone is focused on the offense for good reason. When the D makes more stops than expected and the O does what the O does people make sit up and go oh crap we are in trouble. Auburn has all the pieces this year to be very successful, however our schedule is brutal. I don't care what the final stats are running or passing what I care about is the scoreboard

[BJ17 0]

IDK Miss State is pretty scrapy on defense.

[jcm81 2]

We were almost at a 50/50 balance between run/pass last year against MSU. They did a pretty good job defending the run, but it was before we introduced the read option. We torched them through the air last year to the tune of 340 yards, and I feel we could do that again if necessary. I don't think it will be necessary.

Our offense that shows up in the game this fall won't let MSU control the ball for 10 more minutes like they did last year. If they do control the ball 10 minutes more than we do, I think it will be more along the lines of us scoring quickly (like Ark. last year).

I also don't think MSU will be +3 on turnovers like they were last year. That is what kept the game close.

Dak won't rush for 130 yards either. We will be ready for it this time around.

I guess I am a little more confident than most about this game.

[caleb1633 1,418]

We need to put a good beating on MSU. We've beaten them the last few years but they have always been close games. They did do better then just about any one at slowing down our offense last year and the year Cam was here (2 of the best offensive years in AU history). Unfortunately I think they will find it a bit harder to do this season as AU won't be in "trying to figure it out" mode when we play them. They've had the good fortune of playing us early for much of the past decade and we have had a new QB pretty much every year during that time. Not so this year!!

Spot on. Ditto for LSU, at least last year.

We can win every game by one point for all I care (so long as we win 15), but I want to us run LSU out of JHS. I want all their starters fired after this game as well as their OC and DC. That's how much I want us to destroy the other Tigers.

[N2AUtigers 5]

McKinney said. "When they were playing 'Bama, we were sitting at home, and I was saying, oh, they're fixing to run the zone."

Really McKinney? Brilliant, simply brilliant!

A defensive genius in the making.

That's just the point, the whole world knew what was coming, but how to stop it?... not so much. .

[weagle06 75]

I live about 30 miles from Starkville, and absolutely hope we beat the brakes off of them every year. We always get them so early in the year and seem to struggle. Then even though we still win 9 out of 10 games against them I always hear how they "almost" beat us. Moral victories. I don't remember getting them this late in the year in a while. I really believe that in 2010 & 2013 if we had played them later we would have beaten them handily. Hopefully this year this works in our favor.

[AUfan_UAgrad 230]

If you take one thing away from the article don't let it be McKinney's comments. It should be this "The hurry-up, no-huddle's core plays are always changing to fit Malzahn's personnel." This is a sign of a great coach, someone that can adjust to his personnel instead of making them adjust to his play book.

[Milnewd 0]

Jesus guys, he was complimenting us. If Bama is the most insecure fan base in CFB then we are the most sensitive for sure. McKinney was saying that even though what we were doing was simple and many teams knew what was coming, we were so physical, and executed to such perfection that no one could stop us. THAT'S A COMPLIMENT GUYS. LEARN HOW TO TAKE A COMPLIMENT.

[Dual-Threat Rigby 8,641]

^ +1

[McLoofus 35,182]

McKinney would watch Auburn's games on TV and wonder why teams were having so much trouble.

That is not a compliment.

[Threedog79 0]

McKinney is being called by ever D coordinator in the nation...as we type.

[mcgufcm 4,096]

I don't think McKinney was being complementary. I'd love to beat State handily (I'm from Starkville), but realistically, Mullen puts a TON of emphasis on the Auburn game every year. His guys respond to that. It's going to be a tight game.