Auburn football finished the 2017 regular season with a 10-3 record. Here are my five takeaways from the Tigers’ regular season.
The Auburn Tigers have finished the 2017 college football regular season with a 10-3 record, and ranked 10th in the S&P+ rankings from Bill C. The Tigers and head coach Gus Malzahn had a wild year defeating two number one ranked teams, but also losing a 14-6 contest to the third ranked Clemson Tigers, a random upset against the LSU Tigers, and capping off the season dropping the SEC Championship Game to the Georgia Bulldogs in a rematch.
Gus Malzahn was rumored to be heading to Fayetteville to take over the Arkansas Razorbacks, but decided to stay put at Auburn to the tune of $49 million. Malzahn made a great choice seeing as his shotgun wing-t style offense has their big weapons all returning to Auburn for 2018.
Baylor transfer Jarrett Stidham started slow but finished hot and he’ll be re-joined by tailback Kerryon Johnson (unless he declares early for the NFL Draft), and wide receivers Ryan Davis and Darius Slayton. Malzahn will also have to expect more from wide receiver Nate Craig-Myers who scored three touchdowns all late in the season.
Here are my five takeaways from the Auburn Tigers regular season as they head into the Peach Bowl against the undefeated UCF Knights.
5. Recruiting goes beyond incoming freshman
Auburn has done a fine job of recruiting incoming freshman under Gus Malzahn. There’s no doubt he’s put together some star-studded classes on both sides of the ball. Auburn is currently ranked ninth overall and third in the SEC, per 247sports. However, one place the Tigers have benefited more than any other is recruiting transfers at the quarterback position.
When Malzahn was just a lowly offensive coordinator, the Tigers won their national title with multi-transfer Cam Newton, now the Carolina Panthers’ star player. Then, when Gus returned to be head coach, he transferred in cornerback Nick Marshall from Georgia and turned him into a national title runner-up quarterback in Malzahn’s spread-to-run offense.
This offseason, he talked Jarrett Stidham into transferring from Baylor. Stidham started three games at Baylor before transferring and sitting out his sophomore season. The former five-star prospect then arrived at Auburn as another high-profile transfer quarterback for Malzahn’s offense. Stidham threw for 2,800 passing yards and 17 touchdowns adding another four touchdowns on the ground. The true beauty of Stidham was his lack of turnovers, only throwing four interceptions on 327 attempts.
Malzahn has won a national title with a transfer quarterback and played for another in a short time in Auburn, Ala. It remains to be seen the true pinnacle that Stidham can rise to as he was only a sophomore in 2017.
4. College football is still a run-first world
With all of the throwing going on in the boring world of the NFL, college football remains a run-first world. Georgia and Alabama would prefer to run the ball down your throat and play stingy defense. Clemson is a more balanced attack that excels at picking on the weaknesses of their opponents.
The Oklahoma Sooners are focused around Baker Mayfield but they’ve produced a slew of NFL-ready running backs over the last decade. Even the cusp teams of the College Football Playoff like Ohio State and Wisconsin are run-first organizations from totally different offensive sets.
College football remains run-heavy and Auburn is no exception. Jarrett Stidham may be great passer but Auburn ran the ball almost twice as much as they threw it. Stidham averaged 8.6 yards per attempt which is phenomenal, but the Tigers relied on Kerryon Johnson as the season progressed. He averaged 5.0 yards per carry which isn’t great in college football but he was the workhorse back rushing for 1,300 yards and 17 touchdowns.
Kam Martin and Kamryn Pettaway contributed 6.0-plus yards per carry on the ground in a relief role and wing back type receiver Eli Stove added 10.8 yards per rush. The Tigers averaged 5.0 yards a carry as a team and scored 32 times on the ground.
Auburn does what many high school programs have started to do which is show a spread look using wide receivers, wings, and H-Backs while running old school wing-t principles. This keeps people from admonishing you for running an “antiquated” offense like Georgia Tech, Navy or Army and keeps the high tempo and ability for post-snap run-pass options.
3. Versatile players thrive under Gus Malzahn
Gus Malzahn’s pistol and shotgun wing-t thrives on versatile players who can call themselves “inside receivers” but play a wingback style role in the wing-t and flexbone offenses. He’s also used an H-Back type player like Chandler Cox in a variety of spots and assignments from lead fullback, to tight end and a winged H-Back type position.
Cox’s ability to block between the tackles as well as in space makes him invaluable to Malzahn. He also taught Malzahn some of the singlewing and spin series offense that Cox was the quarterback of at Apopka High School in Florida. Cox played under Rick Darlington who is a legend in the coaching world.
Aside from an H-Back like Cox, Malzahn again uses his receivers as runners. Take Eli Stove for example. He’s a sophomore wide out from Niceville, Fla. Stove has good size at 6-foot-0 and 180 pounds and ran the football 27 times for 292 yards and 10.8 yards per carry with a touchdown. He also caught 28 balls for 264 yards.
Along with Cox, who caught six balls for 55 yards in 2017, there’s backup quarterback Malik Willis who ran for 221 yards and a touchdown and threw for a touchdown as well.
Malzahn is adding another dual-threat type in Joey Gatewood. He’s a 6-foot-4, 232-pound athlete from the Jacksonville, Fla., area. Gatewood is a dual-threat quarterback by trade but projects to do a little of everything on offense. At Bartram Trails, Gatewood threw for 1,400 yards, ran for 1,100 yards, and scored 69 touchdowns during his high school career.
2. Defense wins championships in college football
The Auburn Tigers are known more for their offense because of having an offensive-minded head coach, and Cam Newton winning the Heisman Trophy from the quarterback position. However, the Tigers’ defense was ranked 5th in the S&P+ defense rankings.
The Tigers held Clemson, Missouri, Mississippi State, Georgia and Alabama to 17 or fewer points on the season on their quest to beating two No. 1-ranked teams. The Auburn defense will have its work cut out against UCF’s high-powered offense but with Scott Frost moving on to Lincoln to coach the Nebraska Cornhuskers, the totality of what has happened in Orlando remains to be seen for the Peach Bowl.
Auburn’s defense was led by linebacker Deshaun Davis and “Buck” Jeff Holland. The former logged 75 tackles on the season and the latter had nine sacks and 12 tackles for loss.
Auburn has been at its best when it has had explosive defensive linemen and Derrick Brown logged 8.5 tackles for loss and 3.5 sacks at 6-foot-5 and 316 pounds. The Auburn 2-deep should remain in-tact for 2018 as it was quite young in 2017.
That youth was masked by defensive coordinator Kevin Steele. He has worked around the NCAA with stops at Auburn, LSU, Alabama, Florida State, Baylor, Nebraska, Tennessee and Oklahoma State. That’s quite the resume for the 59 year old defensive coordinator from South Carolina.
While Auburn does lose many players to leaving early for the NFL Draft, they’re only graduating four from the two deep and three are starters in linebacker Tre Williams, and defensive backs Robert Stephen and Matthews Tray. Auburn should reload as usual signing four-star studs like Zakoby McClain, Christian Tutt, Jamien Sherwood and Michael Harris.
1. Gus Malzahn still has that touch of magic to him
Gus Malzahn is that coach that flutters in and out of the hot seat but with most coaches go their quarterback. Malzahn has hit on his transfers, as I’ve previously mentioned, but his actual recruits have been duds which raises a bit of a red flag. However, he signed a seven-year contract extension this month to remain at Auburn for $49 million over the deal.
Malzahn’s ability to beat Nick Saban is what I’ll assume kept him in his spot. For many coaches, that seems to be the death knell of their time not only in the SEC West, but the SEC East as well.
The head coach making chicken salad from Nick Marshall proved his guru-like abilities to get the most from dual-athlete quarterbacks. He now has Jarrett Stidham, Malik Willis and Joey Gatewood to use in that dual-threat role.
While Malzahn doesn’t need the quarterback to be a true option runner, he does need him to be a threat to keep the football on rollouts or in the option game. Many coaches are going to this methodology because of what it does to defenses having to account for quarterbacks running, run-pass options, and even wingbacks running the ball in the Malzahn offense.
Next: 2018 NFL Mock Draft: Complete first round pre-bowl season
With Malzahn having that magic touch to beat Saban, win a national title at Auburn as an assistant and upset No. 1-ranked Georgia and Alabama in the same season, his magic has given him extra shine in 2017. If Auburn can take care of UCF that will start 2018 with momentum for a national title run at Toomer’s Corner.