Coach Malzahn Outlook

[Dual-Threat Rigby 8,676]

Alright so Gus can't coach QBs, let's just go off that basis. His regime for training them seems to include use mostly arm strength and forget your mechanics almost always. Since JUCOs always workout, why couldn't true freshmen? I rather have Woody out here than Jeremy or Sean right now.

[WarEagle1983 2,185]

Franklin graduates in Dec. Which means he'll enroll in Dec at Auburn correct? Sure hope so. We need to figure out the QB situation after the season and fast! Opening next year against Clemson...we don't have any time to waste fixing our offense.

[SouthGATiger 64]

What I believe is that White is too good to be beaten out. Barring injury, of course.

I like Sean. I think he's an excellent passer. But I think we're moving back to a dual-threat guy. Our recruiting efforts already tip our hand as both HS commits we have for 2016 and 2017 are DTQBs. For Sean to win the job, he's going to have to be obviously better than JF III because I don't think Gus is going to endure another year without a legit threat on the QB keeper with the zone read.

So based on that...wth was Gus thinking when he recruited JJ, SW & TQ? If we need a DTQB to run this offense, then why did he recruit these kids? They are not DT qb's. Poor poor decision making by the coaching staff. So your saying that now Gus is changing what QB's we're recruiting. That says alot about Gus & Rhett.

And by the way, we did recruit DTQB's ....they just didn't sign with AU.

[SouthGATiger 64]

In the last 2 years, Malzahn's record is 14-11 overall & 6-10 in conference play.

And the first year of that was with DTQB Nick Marshall...interesting.

[NewDay22 0]

He needs another great All-conference DTQB to make him look like a genius.

Newsflash: Coaches need great players to look great. Details at 11.

Correct. If JJ makes the plays that were there heck no telling what Javon could have done. Opposing defense have a great advantage with JJ at the helm and to some

extent Sean.

But end of day it still falls on the head man. I just don't know what Gus has been doing at practice not to see JJ was as lacking as he was.

Is it lack of contact and practicing indoors too much? Who knows but I don't buy that JJ practices well.

[NewDay22 0]

What I believe is that White is too good to be beaten out. Barring injury, of course.

I like Sean. I think he's an excellent passer. But I think we're moving back to a dual-threat guy. Our recruiting efforts already tip our hand as both HS commits we have for 2016 and 2017 are DTQBs. For Sean to win the job, he's going to have to be obviously better than JF III because I don't think Gus is going to endure another year without a legit threat on the QB keeper with the zone read.

So based on that...wth was Gus thinking when he recruited JJ, SW & TQ? If we need a DTQB to run this offense, then why did he recruit these kids? They are not DT qb's. Poor poor decision making by the coaching staff. So your saying that now Gus is changing what QB's we're recruiting. That says alot about Gus & Rhett.

And by the way, we did recruit DTQB's ....they just didn't sign with AU.

And there in lies some of the problem. We have to come thru on recruiting and we have lost some big ones. However this past week has been good to us so he is doing something right. I want guys that can toss and catch like ole miss was doing last night. You add that pass attack with our run game and we have a different story.

[auburn4ever 1,266]

I've been seeing a lot of question marks on Malzahn during the past 2 years.

[Mikey 16,631]

What I believe is that White is too good to be beaten out. Barring injury, of course.

I like Sean. I think he's an excellent passer. But I think we're moving back to a dual-threat guy. Our recruiting efforts already tip our hand as both HS commits we have for 2016 and 2017 are DTQBs. For Sean to win the job, he's going to have to be obviously better than JF III because I don't think Gus is going to endure another year without a legit threat on the QB keeper with the zone read.

So based on that...wth was Gus thinking when he recruited JJ, SW & TQ? If we need a DTQB to run this offense, then why did he recruit these kids? They are not DT qb's. Poor poor decision making by the coaching staff. So your saying that now Gus is changing what QB's we're recruiting. That says alot about Gus & Rhett.

And by the way, we did recruit DTQB's ....they just didn't sign with AU.

We know what Gus was thinking: That he can win with pocket passers if they are good enough and that's entirely correct. Sean White is good enough. Three straight 250 yard games before he was injured, so what more does it take to wreck a popular but unproven theory about DT quarterbacks?

Sean White wasn't selected for the Elite 11 QB competition, he was added as a last-minute replacement and won the thing. He wasn't selected to the high school all-star game, he was added as a last-minute replacement and was named MVP. He wasn't named this years' starter but he won the job.

This kid has been underestimated and underrated as long as I've known about him and at every turn he proves the "experts" wrong. I expect that, barring injury, he'll prove them wrong again next year.

[TitanTiger 20,499]

What I believe is that White is too good to be beaten out. Barring injury, of course.

I like Sean. I think he's an excellent passer. But I think we're moving back to a dual-threat guy. Our recruiting efforts already tip our hand as both HS commits we have for 2016 and 2017 are DTQBs. For Sean to win the job, he's going to have to be obviously better than JF III because I don't think Gus is going to endure another year without a legit threat on the QB keeper with the zone read.

So based on that...wth was Gus thinking when he recruited JJ, SW & TQ? If we need a DTQB to run this offense, then why did he recruit these kids? They are not DT qb's. Poor poor decision making by the coaching staff. So your saying that now Gus is changing what QB's we're recruiting. That says alot about Gus & Rhett.

And by the way, we did recruit DTQB's ....they just didn't sign with AU.

I think Gus believed what most of us did, based on his Tulsa days...that he could also have an effective offense with a pass-first option at QB. Instead of the threat of the QBs legs being what kept defenses honest on running plays, it would be the threat of him burning them with his arm. And with Jeremy he seemed to have a little of both. A pass first QB who was also mobile. That is what JJ looked like in high school. It would enable him to recruit better passing QBs instead of athletes that have to be molded that way as well as better WRs. But when JJ imploded it created a crisis of strategy. Sean is every bit the pocket passer as JJ - more in fact. But he's much smaller, he's a RS Freshman and DCs were going to orchestrate their game plans around those limitations.

I think Gus probably still believes with the right pass-first QB, he could make his offense hum. He could be right. But given the impatience of the Auburn fanbase, he doesn't have the luxury of giving it another attempt next season. I think he's going back to what he knows works and shelving the pass-first QB for a future day.

Thus I believe next season, JJ will have transferred and won't be in the mix. Sean and JF III will be competing for the starting role, which I believe unless Sean just blows everyone away, will end up going to John Franklin. Queen will be 3rd string with Woody Barrett (DTQB) redshirting. Sean will likely still have some packages he may run, but the DTQB will have the edge going into next year. And that is what we seem to be interested in going forward as well. 2017 commit Lowell Narcisse is also a DTQB.

[Weegle777 78]

"You don't bring a JUCO player in to ride the bench". I hear this over and over. Newsflash: You don't bring anybody in to ride the bench. You hope they all can play, but just as many JUCO guys end up on the pine as anybody else. Just look at our roster for the past two years. Flowers, Moncrief and so forth.

Barring injury, next season Sean White will have a lot of success throwing to former JUCO QB's Jason Smith and John Franklin.

Newsflash: JF III isn't going to be a WR next year.

Man I hope not. Need to get the true zone read back into play.

[auburn4ever 1,266]

If Lashlee stays, our offense has little hope of doing any better then what they did this year. As far as Malzahn's outlook goes, I'm guessing his seat just got a good bit warmer.

[DAG 33,997]

What I believe is that White is too good to be beaten out. Barring injury, of course.

I like Sean. I think he's an excellent passer. But I think we're moving back to a dual-threat guy. Our recruiting efforts already tip our hand as both HS commits we have for 2016 and 2017 are DTQBs. For Sean to win the job, he's going to have to be obviously better than JF III because I don't think Gus is going to endure another year without a legit threat on the QB keeper with the zone read.

So based on that...wth was Gus thinking when he recruited JJ, SW & TQ? If we need a DTQB to run this offense, then why did he recruit these kids? They are not DT qb's. Poor poor decision making by the coaching staff. So your saying that now Gus is changing what QB's we're recruiting. That says alot about Gus & Rhett.

And by the way, we did recruit DTQB's ....they just didn't sign with AU.

We know what Gus was thinking: That he can win with pocket passers if they are good enough and that's entirely correct. Sean White is good enough. Three straight 250 yard games before he was injured, so what more does it take to wreck a popular but unproven theory about DT quarterbacks?

Sean White wasn't selected for the Elite 11 QB competition, he was added as a last-minute replacement and won the thing. He wasn't selected to the high school all-star game, he was added as a last-minute replacement and was named MVP. He wasn't named this years' starter but he won the job.

This kid has been underestimated and underrated as long as I've known about him and at every turn he proves the "experts" wrong. I expect that, barring injury, he'll prove them wrong again next year.

His offense has been crazy good with DT QB's. He has been to two NCs with DT QB's. No idea where you think this is unproven. The proof is well documented. Sean White is a good QB. Yes, he put up some good stats. So did Chris Todd. I want to win football games.

And no I am not blaming Sean White for the losses.

[Weegle777 78]

If we are going to be a passing offense, then we need to be nasty at WR and Oline. In a passing offense, you are basically 11 against 10 in favor of the defense. With a true running threat at QB, you even it up at 11 against 11. You force the defense to account for the QB. That causes problems for the defense because it makes it tougher to drop that extra guy in coverage. A one dimensional QB is easier to scheme against.

[Tiger 8,828]

^ was reading all the posts and waiting till the end to post basically this, Weagle. If we are going to go with a pocket passing QB we are going to need a TRULY dominant offensive line. I'm talking the 2013 level of OL. SW can also extend plays but instead of running for a 8 yards on a broken play he continues to look downfield and finds someone open.

That being said, I love SW's effort and grit and what he brought to the offense and he showed lots of promise but if I'm looking at the future I wouldn't be mad if we never recruited another pocket passer again. However, I am not ready to give Franklin the reigns on the sole merit of him being fast. If his abilities give us the best chance to win lets roll with him. If SW continues to improve I also think we can be successful with him at QB especially if our OL becomes more stout in the run game.

[Dan-0 479]

We need two solid QB's to have a chance at being competitive throughout the season. Just look at what happened to SW this year and look at what happened to Baylor and TCU, both of whom ended up with 2nd-3rd string QBs calling signals. So, whether it's SW or JF III who starts, they both need to be ready to take over and run the offense effectively. We do not have to have another Cam or NM. Look at what Bama has; Coker is not really a running threat at all, he just runs the offense effectively. The only thing I think we can all agree on is JJ is not a valid option under any circumstances. We would be better off just to put KJ in the wildcat and go with that.

[AuburnNTexas 7,154]

In the last 2 years, Malzahn's record is 14-11 overall & 6-10 in conference play.

Yep.

I am not sure what was learned. Not sure that he knows. If you can't see that JR, KJ, JS and Roc are your only big play potential players on the team, and that you need to all of the guys invovled in the game plan. Not sure it will get better.

This. If you can't craft a game plan around your playmakers, you have what we saw today.

This is it.....when the game was on the line; oh, like 3rd and 2 inside their 40; we aired out a deep ball instead of giving the ball to Jovon or Payton; twice if need be. This play did me in.... at this point, I could care less if Gus comes back or not. I'm pretty done with him.

He made a perfect call it caught bama off guard and would have put us in the lead with the 1st TD in the game. If we followed your scenario maybe we do get the 1st down but we were not going to get a td without a pass every time we got in red zone they started to stuff our run. It was the perfect time to try it. With a decent pass everybody would say boy Gus is a genius. While I disagreed with some calls after the fact this year it is always easy to disagree with a call after it fails. Lack of execution backed Gus and Lashlee into a corner. For those wantingg all our play makers on the field only PB when healthy and JR when healthy consistently produced when given a chance and they play the same position. JR was hurt early and then Roc got hurt when Roc got well JR was producing. Many said we should have thrown more to Roc. Remember the play where JJ started to run then fired a pass at Roc that bounced into the air. Why would you expect that passing to Roc would improve the QB's passes.

Maybe in the middle of the season (Sarcasm) we should have switched to the wishbone with KJ playing QB then we could have had all of our play makers on the field at the same time.

[TigerTennis80 345]

I love a dual threat QB just b/c the O is so much fun when we have had one. But more than anything, I want a quick thinking, confident guy out there who can execute the plays. If that's a pocket passer, so be it. 2 years ago we ran for more than 300 yds against Bama. Last year we threw for 457 yds & scored 44 points on them (& as Gus has said, should have scored 60). Gus hasn't forgotten how to run an offense. I actually think the 3rd & 2 pass to the end zone was a great call. If we execute we have a TD. Just like the sideline pass to Ricardo in the 2nd half was a great call that we didn't execute. So, to my way of thinking we need a QB who has the mind for Gus' offense, whether dual threat or pocket passer. If Sean's football mind is as good as I've read, I won't be surprised if he's the guy. But I'm not pulling for 1 guy or the other. I'm pulling for 1 of them to be able to make good, quick decisions out there.

All indications are that JJ practiced really well but lost his confidence early after poor decisions on the field & never returned to being the guy we all saw play before. It's not impossible that he finds himself during the offseason. Remember Jason Campbell? Ben Leard? I am among those who can go back to Jeff Burger. All QBs for us who had awful 1st years but came back to have super seasons. I'm not predicting that'll happen for JJ. I'm just reminding us what is possible.

Count me among those optimistic for next year IF we find that quick-thinking, good-decisions guy.

[johnnyAU 3,634]

Athleticism is great to have, but I want a guy that can run the offense, including carrying out fakes, occasionally reading defenses, hitting his targets more than 50% of the time and being tough enough to take on a DB when you need a critical first down. None of these JJ was able to accomplish.

[autigeremt 6,646]

If Lashlee stays, our offense has little hope of doing any better then what they did this year. As far as Malzahn's outlook goes, I'm guessing his seat just got a good bit warmer.

IF CRL stays I could see 2013 as much as I could see 2015. But I doubt he stays......

[milehighfan 1,240]

If Gus wants a pass first opinion at QB, fine. But if that is the way you want to go better make Damon sure you have a receiving Corp that can make difficult as well as easy catches. I just don't see it from these receivers.

[keesler 5,924]

I've been seeing a lot of question marks on Malzahn during the past 2 years.

I admit, this on-the-job training experiment with Gus has been stressful to this AU alum/fan. I had a headache at the end of last season, I've got a massive migrane from this one.

[AU64 10,122]

K....why so many people chit chatting on this forum today...aren't y'all supposed to be taking advantage of "cyber Monday".....spending money on-line to prop up our more or less dormant economy ? Get to it folks.....the country is depending on you to do your patriotic duty

[lionheartkc 6,150]

If we are going to be a passing offense, then we need to be nasty at WR and Oline. In a passing offense, you are basically 11 against 10 in favor of the defense. With a true running threat at QB, you even it up at 11 against 11. You force the defense to account for the QB. That causes problems for the defense because it makes it tougher to drop that extra guy in coverage. A one dimensional QB is easier to scheme against.

This^ is really the scenario. A good running QB helps to cover up deficiencies in the rest of the team, because he can keep the other team guessing and make something out of a busted play. That being said, I suggest, instead of being that team that needs a running QB to be successful, what we need to be striving for is to not have those other deficiencies. Then it won't matter what kind of QB we have, as long as they are good at running or passing. Good O-line/receivers plus pocket passer = plenty of time and a shredded secondary. Good O-line/receivers plus running QB = big holes and parameter blocking for 5-7 yards a carry. We get there and we can stop riskig a heart-attack 8 out of 12 games each season.

I think our biggest problem this year is that we took an offense (specifically at receiver) that was recruited for and coached to support Nick Marshall football (run A LOT, pass when you have to), and tried to plug them into a passing attack. We learned the downside of being known as a run first, zone read team... the best receivers go where the QB is going to pass, because you don't get into the NFL on your blocking skills.

Going forward, IF we lose multiple O-Line members and the replacements aren't gelling quickly and IF we don't land some ready to go, sure handed receivers, then we would be better off, next year, with a running QB, but I wouldn't expect a great record, because if he doesn't have an accurate arm, teams can still sell out to stop the run. If, on the other hand, we can shore up our line and receiving corps then I, personally, want the QB who can make a 3rd and 15 with his arm, consistently, so when something does go wrong, we don't stall.

Yes, perfect scenario is to get a TRUE dual-threat QB... but they are few and far between. Don't hold you breath that anyone on our radar is going to fit that bill.

[cole256 17,084]

If we are going to be a passing offense, then we need to be nasty at WR and Oline. In a passing offense, you are basically 11 against 10 in favor of the defense. With a true running threat at QB, you even it up at 11 against 11. You force the defense to account for the QB. That causes problems for the defense because it makes it tougher to drop that extra guy in coverage. A one dimensional QB is easier to scheme against.

Don't forget qb

[AUFAN78 3,911]

What I believe is that White is too good to be beaten out. Barring injury, of course.

I like Sean. I think he's an excellent passer. But I think we're moving back to a dual-threat guy. Our recruiting efforts already tip our hand as both HS commits we have for 2016 and 2017 are DTQBs. For Sean to win the job, he's going to have to be obviously better than JF III because I don't think Gus is going to endure another year without a legit threat on the QB keeper with the zone read.

So based on that...wth was Gus thinking when he recruited JJ, SW & TQ? If we need a DTQB to run this offense, then why did he recruit these kids? They are not DT qb's. Poor poor decision making by the coaching staff. So your saying that now Gus is changing what QB's we're recruiting. That says alot about Gus & Rhett.

And by the way, we did recruit DTQB's ....they just didn't sign with AU.

We know what Gus was thinking: That he can win with pocket passers if they are good enough and that's entirely correct. Sean White is good enough. Three straight 250 yard games before he was injured, so what more does it take to wreck a popular but unproven theory about DT quarterbacks?

Sean White wasn't selected for the Elite 11 QB competition, he was added as a last-minute replacement and won the thing. He wasn't selected to the high school all-star game, he was added as a last-minute replacement and was named MVP. He wasn't named this years' starter but he won the job.

This kid has been underestimated and underrated as long as I've known about him and at every turn he proves the "experts" wrong. I expect that, barring injury, he'll prove them wrong again next year.

His offense has been crazy good with DT QB's. He has been to two NCs with DT QB's. No idea where you think this is unproven. The proof is well documented. Sean White is a good QB. Yes, he put up some good stats. So did Chris Todd. I want to win football games.

And no I am not blaming Sean White for the losses.

yep