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.