Auburn Tigers wait to see which Gus Malzahn will show up

AUBURN (TNS) — It appears one of two people will be in control of Auburn’s fall football camp when practice begins Wednesday.

The choices are between chief operating officer Gus Malzahn and head football coach Gus Malzahn. The two may look, talk and walk alike. But make no mistake, the difference in the way they think is drastic.

“My teams have taken on my personality in the past, and I think we sort of had four or five different personalities last year, all the different coaches’ personalities,” Malzahn said. “That’s on me. That’s my fault. You live and learn, and I learned the hard way last year.”

Auburn COO Gus Malzahn gave the impression of being more hands-off with his assistants and coordinators during last year’s fall camp. Those fall practices began with expectations of a Southeastern Conference title and national championship contender.

Malzahn stood back and observed more. He still shouted instructions when needed but for the most part, offensive coordinator Rhett Lashlee and running backs coach Tim Horton were in charge of the offensive equation.

“We’re not reinventing the wheel here,” Lashlee said. “We’ve had a lot of success for long periods of time. But it’s a ‘what-have-you-done-for-me-lately’ kind of thing, and none of us feel good about coming up short about the things we wanted to achieve last year.”

Will Muschamp, who Malzahn referred to as “the best defensive mind in all of football,” was seen as the de facto defensive head coach with Malzahn never being where the defensive players were operating.

“My No. 1 goal is to get our defense to play Top 10 defense. It’s not offense,” Malzahn said. “The way we’re going to be good for a long period of time is defense, and that’s just the bottom line.”

A 6-6 regular season with a last place finish in the Western Division created more questions than answers and several of those issues remain unanswered.

Goodbye COO Gus and welcome back to the ball coach.

Therefore, head coach Gus Malzahn became more individually involved with several facets of his football program this spring. During all the open media viewing portions of spring practice, the Tigers’ fourth-year head coach was seen giving hands-on instruction to the quarterbacks and specifically being obvious in his involvement with junior college transfer John Franklin III.

“I’m hands-on the whole offense,” Malzahn said in March. “I’m going to do more of the offensive coaching, helping the guys. I feel great about our staff, but that’s what I enjoy doing.”

With questions to solve at quarterback, changes on the coaching staff and personnel turnover on the offensive line and at linebacker, it’ll be interesting to see if football coach Malzahn can get Auburn closer to what transpired in his first season.

“I fully understand we didn’t do well offensively (in 2015),” Malzahn said after the season ended. “If you look at our history, we have done extremely well. As a matter of fact, since we’ve been in the SEC, we’ve had some of the better outputs in the history of our league. I totally get it.”