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I'm confused about Gus Malzahn

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skyman said:
I mentioned it in other threads, but even in his book Malzahn stated that his offense would get figured out and defenses would catch up. The fact he was able to ride it from high school ranks to big time cfb and make millions while also having a decent coaching tree and help other make bank was always impressive to me. That Arky 8 with mustain and getting foot in door was big for high school rank coaches.

Buttt his offense got figured out and the fact he here 20 years later is dope but dam I was utterly shocked how unprepared Bama defense looked for simple **** gus has ALWAYS done, like they shouldnt be able to house simple jet sweeps against a "bama defense" Wommack must not have watched any film or prepared his team for anything. Their QB is a true dual threat and can be a headache but for them to look that bad was shocking. They were unprepared.
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Ncaa Football GIF by Arkansas Razorbacks


Ask Mitch mustain about that.
 
citizenkane said:
We all know that we're going to beat Bethune so why not look ahead?

I admit that I didn't know to much about Malzahn because I rarely follow Auburn football. As far as I can tell Malzahn's offense looked really really good circa 2009-2012 era because off course having Cam Newton helped a lot and I guess his offense was new and radical at the time. He also took the Tigers to the last BCS championship and lost to FSU late in 4th quarter.

But ever since then the Tiger's fell apart mostly on offense. Besides personnel which obviously changes consistently, SEC defenses seem to have figured out how to stop his "unstoppable" offense. Malzahn also fell apart at UCF going 4-8 in the Big 12. This guy consistently fails on the big stage for a reason.

So this leads my to my question, WTF was Alabama doing? Alabama has played Auburn every year since the beginning of time and yet they looked like they ZERO film on this guy.

The defense refused to set edges, keep gap containment and consistently over-pursue the ball carriers. IMO, Alabama clearly does NOT suffer from a lack of talent so either their defensive coaches are incompetent or their players haven't fully bought in or some combination of both.

Trying to stop his offense will be a PITA but let's not get ahead of ourselves. Castellanos is good but he's not Cam Newton good. Malzahn's offense was revolutionary in 2010 but today's date is 2025. FSU isn't going to face another power conference opponent until Virginia followed by our game. I suspect they will pad stats on 2 straight lower tier teams but i'm not buying into hype that Malzahn has somehow "reinvented" himself.

There is a reason his offense hasn't had any real success against good competition since 2014 and those reasons are likely to surface again soon.
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The only thing you need to know about that game is that Alabama was man handled on both sides of the ball. Any coaching philosophy will work when both lines are pushing the other team back on just about every play. Alabama is absolute trash and likely wont be a 500 sec team this year,
 
edge said:
I will say the Bama LB's looked super slow. Maybe they don't have that LB talent anymore.

And I thought Norvell was an offensive mastermind? Was I wrong about that? I was curious as well why he brought in Gus.
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Norvell is buying himself time. He needed to show that he was focusing on the whole team as they were a **** show and him bringing in Malzhan may buy him a year or two.
 
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FSU didn’t do anything crazy. They played a good game. Bama lacks the drive defensively. I saw a video of some white safety they have. Looked absolutely terrified to make contact. They also look slow. Even reacting slow. That end around TD should’ve been a dead to rites type play.

I’ll give credit where it’s due to FSU. They played inspired ball all day. And Bama looked like every player expected the guy next to him to make a play. We won’t learn much from FSU before they play us, outside how Bama plays the next few weeks.
 
Malzahn’s offense is fools gold. This is coming from a former huge fan.

Him and Chip are two of the best offensive innovators ever but the big difference is Chip evolved the passing game and Gus is still running the exact same ****. Which it’ll be fine as long as he stays ahead of the chains or keeping the defense off balance with all the smoke and mirrors. It’s when the run and all the horizontal body shots don’t land . Then he has to put away the run and all the passes based off the run action . Then he’s depending on very antiquated route concepts that DC’s can sit on .

Lastly he has the perfect / worst qb for for his offense . A great athlete that perfectly melds to the run part of the gameplan but like his route concepts is suspect in the pass game . A very inaccurate thrower that can survive as long as defenses can’t sit on obvious pass situations.

Fact is Gus like an aging athlete will have weeks where you have flashbacks to when his scheme was the new craze but more weeks where it’s Willie Mays tripping in the outfield chasing a fly ball.
 
Fsu will get exposed. They lack talent at the skill positions. Their 2nd leading rusher in the game was a wr who had 56 yards on gimmicky plays. Believe 32 came on one play. Your qb is 5’9 180. You can’t depend on him to be your leading rusher every week
 
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FSU's WR were knocking Alabama LB's backwards. It's not a knock on FSU at all. I don't know how good they are, but that is not the Alabama from two years ago. They've been Cokered.
 
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In all fairness it did seem like Malzahn had lost his fastball in recent years…Maybe he has something to prove. We all mocked TC… And alot of that is rightfully so, he's very hard to watch throw at times… But the fact that Malzahn made it a point to go get the kid means he thinks he is a nice fit for the offense. I'm not ready to crown their whole resurgence by any means and at some point someone will force him to beat them with his arm, but if nothing else it's a decent start. Pretty good stable of backs, I'll give them that…With the frosh being an animal.
 
Cribby said:
Malzahn’s offense is fools gold. This is coming from a former huge fan.

Him and Chip are two of the best offensive innovators ever but the big difference is Chip evolved the passing game and Gus is still running the exact same ****. Which it’ll be fine as long as he stays ahead of the chains or keeping the defense off balance with all the smoke and mirrors. It’s when the run and all the horizontal body shots don’t land . Then he has to put away the run and all the passes based off the run action . Then he’s depending on very antiquated route concepts that DC’s can sit on .

Lastly he has the perfect / worst qb for for his offense . A great athlete that perfectly melds to the run part of the gameplan but like his route concepts is suspect in the pass game . A very inaccurate thrower that can survive as long as defenses can’t sit on obvious pass situations.

Fact is Gus like an aging athlete will have weeks where you have flashbacks to when his scheme was the new craze but more weeks where it’s Willie Mays tripping in the outfield chasing a fly ball.
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After looking at some old films I came to the same conclusion that you did about how Gus is running the same exact thing as he did in the past.

So this begs the million dollar question: Did the Alabama defensive coaches adequately prepare the defense mentally to stop Gus offense and the players just failed to execute that plan properly OR did the players execute exactly what Alabama's coaches taught them but it was just **** poor strategy?

I'm not a football expert but if i had to devise a strategy it would be to maintain gap and assignment discipline on 1st and 2nd downs to stop the run/misdirection plays. Put them in 3rd and long and then instead of just trying to rush the passer up the gut i would actually try and keep him in a passing pocket and make Castellanos beat me by reading coverages and throwing the ball down the field. FSU only completed 9 passes for 154, everything else was on the ground.

Am i correct in saying that this is like the old Georgia tech offenses but with more of a spread component?
 
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