Jim Harris: Everyone's Getting on the Gus Bus With Auburn

On the first snap of the 2005 state championship game for Arkansas' highest classification, Springdale's Damian Williams lined up on the left side as a wide receiver, came in motion toward the right, took Mitch Mustain's quick pitch and ran around the right side untouched for a 60-yard score against West Memphis.

That was pretty much a basic running play. The ball was lateraled, so we can imagine all those "Gus Malzahn passes all the time" believers can say, in that case, the ball was again in the air a moment or two. It was, however, tossed backward. Yes, to a speedy receiver. For a play that resulted in as easy a touchdown as if Mustain had taken a shotgun snap and then lofted a perfectly timed bomb to Williams down the sideline. Easier, in fact.

The point is, Malzahn understood that the opposing defense would be on their heels to start the game, expecting a Mustain throw, and probably to Williams on his left side of the field. Williams likely would be defended man-to-man by West Memphis' best athlete, maybe with some help over there. So he ran the football the other way and Williams, the fastest man on the field, had a convoy leading him down the right sideline.

Gus Malzahn, now the offensive coordinator at Auburn after the brief one-year stopover with Houston Nutt's 2006 Arkansas staff and two years as a co-coordinator for Tulsa, says he ran the ball at tiny Hughes in eastern Arkansas, his first high school head coaching job. When he had passers and receivers to overwhelm the defenses who were first trained to stop the run in the smaller prep classifications, and then at Springdale in the physical Class AAAAA-West, he spread the field and threw. Or he spread the field and ran. And he ran his plays fast, making the calls from the sideline with cryptic cue cards so the defense couldn't substitute in special packages and couldn't catch their breath.

Sometimes it suited the Bulldogs, such as in their dismantling of Shreveport Evangel in 2005, to run the ball -- and they did it effectively with a good high school running back as well as with Mustain -- nearly the whole second half. Passing was always precise for the Bulldogs because their top skill folks spent the summers playing 7-on-7 coast-to-coast against the best teams in the country.

Somewhere along the way -- probably because he had such overwhelming skill in the skill positions and the chance to do it at Shiloh Christian and then at Springdale -- Malzahn was deemed this pass-happy offensive coach. It has stuck with him through three college jobs, where a closer look reveals that Malzahn showed he understood the benefits of blending the run with the pass.

That explosive, no-huddle, fast style won at Shiloh and Springdale, and it's the same offense has been carried over successfully at Shiloh under coach Josh Floyd. When Springdale ran into a plethora of better athletes in Little Rock Central in the 2004 state semifinals, the Bulldogs offense was phyically whipped early and Mustain was put out with a broken arm in a one-side loss. The next season Bulldogs never saw as athletic a team as Central's 2003-2004 bunch, the type that could dominate the scrimmage and cover up the receivers on the corners, and coasted to a state title, destroying everyone in their wake.

No matter what offensive scheme your using, if a significant number of players on the other side are better, you're unlikely to beat them. Again, a team can be running the wishbone (such as Georgia Tech), the veer, the old Nebraska option-I, the spread (be it running a la West Virginia, or passing like Texas Tech), or whatever. When they do it efficiently enough, an even matchup of talent on paper more than likely will sway their direction. Such a specialized attack that isn't seen much often can annihilate lesser teams. 

But when Gus Malzahn was hired by Arkansas in December 2005 -- apparently through UA trustee influence to lessen the pressure already on head coach Houston Nutt to at least cosmetically bring the Razorbacks' offense into the 21st century, and to salvage a recruiting class disaster by bringing in his star players -- somehow the perception was that Arkansas would spread the field and abandon smash-mouth football to throw it all the time.