Gus Malzahn & The Death of Defense at Auburn

In Week One, it was a little embarrassing but overlooked in the end thanks to a little last-second dose of that “Auburn Magic”.

In Week Two, it was easy to look past because the Tigers had just pulled off a mild upset and were now 1-0 in the SEC.

But after Week Three’s bitter and disappointing loss on the road at Clemson, it finally became impossible even for Auburn fans to continue ignoring it - Auburn’s defense is bad. Really bad.

In fact, it’s on pace to potentially finish as the worst defense in the history of college football. As Kevin Scarbinsky points out today in his Birmingham News column, the Tigers’ 534 yards per game average is likely to rise once Auburn faces SEC juggernauts South Carolina, Arkansas, Florida and LSU in consecutive weeks. It’s completely feasible that it could climb past the 1993 Maryland defense’s record of 553 yards per game. And while the total defense has been abysmal for Auburn, firmly among the five worst in the nation, it’s the points allowed per game that should really be disturbing to Auburn fans. At just over 36.5 points per game, the Auburn defense is putting their offense in the precarious position of needing to score at least six touchdowns to secure a victory, no easy feat even for an offense as prolific as Gus Malzahn’s.

And so as is usually the case with a team struggling on one side of the ball and not on the other, Auburn fans are ready to can defensive coordinator Ted Roof. There’s no question Roof’s defenses at Auburn have been nearly as bad during his first two seasons as they are this year. And yes, his defenses were bad at Duke too, though judging a coach’s performance at Duke is like judging a three-year-old at doing algebra - they just don’t have the tools to succeed in that situation. At Auburn though, Roof has had plenty of talent, including a first round draft pick in Nick Fairly a year ago.

But this isn’t just Ted Roof’s defense. For one thing, the head coach at Auburn is a guy who at one point in the last decade was considered maybe the finest defensive mind in the game. Gene Chizik has said he has major influence over the defensive game planning at Auburn and even a hand in coaching players individually during practice. You won’t find me putting Chizik on my top five list of the game’s best coaches but I hardly find it believable that he could suddenly forget how to coach defense.

One thing that I haven’t heard many folks consider is the possibility that the root of this problem lies not Auburn’s defense, but rather in its offense. Gus Malzahn is probably the most popular man in Auburn now that Cam Newton is in Carolina and it’s hard to see how the man who has led the Auburn offense to its best output ever could be havin a negative impact on the program as a whole. But let’s look at some numbers.

Auburn currently leads the nation in total snaps taken on defense and they lead most of the SEC in that category by a pretty sizable margin, and just ahead of Tulsa, Gus Malzahn’s former employer (more on that later). That statistic has something to do with Auburn’s inability to get off the field on defense but it also has an awful lot to do with Auburn’s style of offense. Gus Malzahn’s fast paced attack almost ensures that Auburn’s opponents will have more offensive possessions per game than average, thus meaning the Auburn defense will have to take the field more often than most other defenses in the nation.

This has been the case since Malzahn’s first day at Auburn. In 2008, Tommy Tuberville’s worst Auburn team of his tenure allowed an average of 18 points per game. One year later with Malzahn and Roof in tow, Gene Chizik’s first team allowed 27.5 ppg, followed by 24 ppg during their 14-0 national championship run. Yes, they won a lot of games during that stretch but that’s due almost entirely to their phenomenal and nearly unstoppable offense in 2010.

Obviously, it’s hard to judge whether Malzahn’s offense has a strong negative impact on his team’s defense based solely on his time at Auburn, since Ted Roof has been there the entire time as well. Let’s take a look at Malzahn’s previous stop, Tulsa.

In 2007 and 2008, a time span in which Malzahn’s offenses were among the nation’s best in almost every category, his team’s defenses surrendered 33 and 28 points per game, respectively. The year before Malzahn arrived, under the same defensive coordinator? 20 points per game.

Yes, Malzahn’s offenses are tremendously successful at racking up yards and putting points on the board. But I think it’s time that Auburn faces the fact that there is a sacrifice one is forced to make by running an offense like Malzahn’s and that sacrifice comes on the defensive side of the ball. That leaves a smaller margin of error for Auburn to succeed and if Malzahn’s offense can’t produce something in the neighborhood of 35 points per game, it appears highly unlikely they’ll be able to win consistently.

Ted Roof will likely be fired by the end of this season and the next defensive coordinator will likely bring some enthusiasm and optimism to Auburn’s eternally enthusiastic and optimistic fans. But what happens when that defensive coordinator can’t get his defenses to perform any better than Roof’s? At what point does Malzahn become more of a liability, a detriment to the balance of a team, than an asset?

Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe it’s all on Roof, maybe it’s not Malzahn’s fault. One thing is for sure: where Malzahn goes, bad defense seems to follow.