23 December 2013
AUBURN, Alabama – The overpowering rushing attack that drove Auburn all the way to the BCS Championship Game remains something of a mystery to opponents and pundits alike.
Week after week, game after game, the public perception of Gus Malzahn's offense remained the same: At some point, experts kept saying, an elite SEC defense would find a way to slow down the Tigers' running game.
So much for that storyline. Auburn's rushing attack barely broke stride, piling up 323 yards against Georgia, 296 against Alabama and a turf-pounding 545 yards in the SEC Championship against a Missouri team that hadn't given up more than 184 rushing yards in a game all season.
Now, another top-notch defense awaits in Pasadena, a Florida State unit teeming with future NFL talent.
"We're going to have to play our best football," Auburn centerReese Dismukes said. "I don't know that we can run on anybody. I don't think we can run on the Green Bay Packers."
GROUND AND POUND
Auburn has run the ball on 72.4 percent of its plays this season, a mark that would be the highest for any national title team since that 1997 Cornhuskers squad, a group that ran it a whopping 80.5 percent of the time.
Fifteen teams have won the national championship since Nebraska shared that title with Michigan. Of that group, eight have run the ball more than 60 percent of the time, including a 2010 Auburn team that ran it on 68.8 percent of its plays.
Both Malzahn and offensive coordinator Rhett Lashlee have been asked so many questions about the heavy reliance on the run this season.
The answer is always the same.
Auburn's offense has the capability to expand the play-calling, use a few portions of the playbook fans haven't seen this season, but Malzahn and Lashlee aren't going to change a successful formula unless the defense starts making stops.
"It's a real credit to them. Don't be dumb about it," Chris Brown, the brains behind SmartFootball.com and one of the game's best X's and O's analysts, said. "Ride what's working. Ride what the players do best."
X's AND O'S
The core of Malzahn's hurry-up, no-huddle has never changed, a power running game based on the Delaware Wing-T, run out of spread formations designed to pressure a defense across the entire field.
"I was kind of a gap-oriented coach early on. We added the zone," Malzahn said. "Then I got with Herb Hand when we went to Tulsa. He was very versed on the zone read, all that. We kind of blended some things together, each year just kind of tried to tweak it and really tried to build our offense around our quarterback each year."
Tailoring the offense to fit the quarterback means that Auburn's best play – and consequently, the one the Tigers run more than any other – changes on a year-to-year basis. In 2009, with Chris Todd at quarterback and Ben Tate at running back, Malzahn relied heavily on the buck sweep, a play where the line blocks down, the guards pull and lead the running back around the edge as the quarterback fakes a reverse to receiver running behind.
Cam Newton arrived on campus the next season. With a 6-6, 250-pounder at quarterback, Malzahn stuck to the base play "power", where the line blocks down, the fullback kicks out the unblocked defensive end and the running back follows a pulling guard through the hole, a play Auburn used heavily in Tre Mason's 304-yard performance against Missouri. That team also relied on the inverted veer, a play that allowed Newton to read the unblocked play-side defensive end; if the end crashes inside, Newton handed the ball to a running back on the sweep. If the end stayed outside, Newton kept it himself and take it up the middle behind the guard, a formula Marshall followed for 68 yards against Tennessee.
At Arkansas State, Malzahn relied heavily on the inside zone, a foundational play for almost every offense, linemen firing off into a zone and blocking the first defender there, opening cutback lanes for the running back.
"It's all within the same framework," Brown said. "It's stuff that the kids know and they can teach, and it's not that many different concepts, but they kind of ride what's working."
Now Auburn is relying heavily on the zone read.
ZONE READ
Up front, the line blocks an inside zone, setting up another handoff for the running back to find a cutback lane. At the snap, the quarterback reads the back-side defensive end, who is unblocked. If the end stays outside, the quarterback hands it off to the running back, and in Malzahn's offense, the target is directly up the middle. If the end crashes, the quarterback keeps and takes off to the perimeter.
Back when he was first named the starter in August, Nick Marshall said he felt most comfortable in Auburn's zone read package. Over the Tigers' first bye week, Malzahn and Lashlee decided to feature the play to take advantage of Ole Miss' defensive ends, who crash hard into the middle on almost every play.
Marshall responded by rushing for 140 yards.
"That's when the read-option got down to it," Marshall said. "I just started trusting my instincts and knew if I could, just beat the defensive end."
Off of that base play, Malzahn and Lashlee started adding wrinkles. Auburn has run the play out of almost any formation: a single-back, four receivers; a two-back set with the running back on one side of Marshall and the H-back on the other; the H-back and tailback on the same side; the inverted wishbone, with two H-backs on opposite sides of the formation and a lone tailback directly behind Marshall, among others.
"The really good thing about this offense is we can run one play so many different ways," fullback Jay Prosch said. "It may look like we're running the same play, but there's a lot of things that may be changing or being done differently. It's amazing how versatile it is. It changes weekly."
Prosch plays a central role in the wrinkles added to the zone read after the snap.
Depending on the opponent, Prosch has been used to come across the formation and act as a lead blocker for Marshall on the outside, drive off the ball to provide another block for Tre Mason on the play side, or team with the tight end to pull and kick out defensive backs on the perimeter to give Marshall a cutback lane outside.
"The thing that I think they've added. ... and they do it a ton this year, is what I think of as the Nevada/San Francisco 49ers kind of wrinkle to it, where you bring the guy from across the formation, and he kind of bluff-blocks the defensive end and goes up to hit the linebacker," Brown said.
According to Brown, the reason for that wrinkle is simple.
In response to the zone read, defenses have widely begun using what's called a scrape-exchange. In a scrape-exchange, the defensive end crashes, forcing the quarterback to keep, and a linebacker lined up inside runs to the perimeter to eliminate the quarterback threat.
Bringing Prosch across the formation eliminates that linebacker and springs Marshall for a big gain.
And then, on top of all of that, Marshall has the option to throw, snapping bubble screens out to the perimeter like he did against Arkansas and Georgia or flipping the ball to a wide-open Sammie Coates for the game-tying touchdown in the Iron Bowl.
All of those elements have led announcers, including CBS color man Gary Danielson, to dub Auburn's offense the triple-option, comparing it to Georgia Tech, the service academies and those Nebraska offenses that dominated the Big 12.
In terms of straight X's and O's and scheme, Auburn isn't running the true triple-option, the fullback taking off up the middle, the quarterback pulling with the option to pitch to a tailback. The Tigers haven't used that scheme this season.
What Malzahn has put together is an offense with plenty of choices.
"If it's the wishbone or the Georgia Tech flexbone or the Houston veer, it connotes a scheme where you're reading defenders to the same side the play is going, you're doing things like that," Brown said. "I don't think Gus would say he's running the triple-option. He's running an offense with lots of options."
BRAWN BEHIND THE BRAINS
In the SEC alone, Texas A&M, Missouri and Ole Miss run similar concepts off of the zone read.
"There's a lot of teams that do a lot of this kind of stuff," Brown said. "They're just not doing it as well."
Auburn's offensive line deserves plenty of credit, as well as a group of wide receivers that takes pride in sealing off defensive backs.
"The strength of Auburn's team, in my opinion, is their offensive line," Alabama coach Nick Saban said in an appearance on ESPN's GameDay before the SEC Championship. "They have a very good offensive line who does a great job of blocking the particular plays they run, which are not all finesse plays. There are direct runs."
On any inside zone, the key is to drive the defensive line off the ball, walling off defenders to create lanes and getting to the second level to clear out linebackers who might be able to make the tackle.
Under the tutelage of offensive line coach J.B. Grimes, Auburn's offensive line has been dominant all season long. Beyond the initial push, left tackle Greg Robinson and Dismukes, in particular, routinely get three or four yards past the line of scrimmage into the defense's second level, taking out linebackers and eliminating chances to chase down Marshall on the outside.
"Whether it's us getting to the second level, or the guards getting to the second level, we work on that in practice," Dismukes said. "It's not really any different than blocking the down guy. Obviously that's the first responsibility, but you need to get to those second-level guys."
Having a Heisman Trophy finalist at running back hasn't hurt, either. A workhorse against top competition, Mason has rushed for 1,621 yards, second only to Bo Jackson in Auburn's annals, and a school-record 22 touchdowns.
Mason's best asset, his quickness, is ideally suited to finding cutback lanes on the inside zone, and the tough runner has picked up more than half of his yards after contact.
"He's a playmaker," Malzahn said. "You just give him the ball and things happen."
Then there's Marshall, who has piled up 1,023 rushing yards this season, including 877 in his final seven games after the Tigers turned to the zone read as the staple of the offense.
Already comfortable with the read, Marshall presents an entirely different problem with his ability to carry out fakes, and his electric speed and elusiveness on the edge make him a more dangerous threat out in space than former Arkansas State quarterback Ryan Aplin, another player with a knack for making the right read.
"When you squeeze too much, the quarterback is going to take the ball and hurt you on the perimeter," Saban said. "You have to be very disciplined in stopping that."
And Auburn's attack is much more than Mason and Marshall. Corey Grant, the burner who handles the bulk of the sweeps, andCameron Artis-Payne both have more than 600 rushing yards. Wide receiver Ricardo Louis has emerged as a dangerous player on the reverse.
In Malzahn's capable hands, all of those pieces have been put together perfectly to produce the nation's top-ranked rushing attack at 335.7 yards per game.
Finding an answer for Auburn's ground game is the new problem, a conundrum that left Missouri coach Gary Pinkel grasping at straws two weeks ago after being asked how to stop the Tigers.
"You know what, I'm the wrong person to ask," Pinkel said. "I'd have stopped it if I could have."
The rest of the SEC's coaches know the feeling.
Good article.
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