Auburn’s Iron Bowl win should keep Gus Malzahn’s job safe for another season
For the past two years, there has been frequent — almost constant — speculation regarding Gus Malzahn’s status as Auburn’s head coach. The prevailing sentiment is that the only reason he wasn’t fired after last season was his expensive contract buyout: $31.725 million last year, now down to $26.625 million.
Yet, for all of the frustration of what Auburn football could be (or maybe should be) there’s this inarguable fact:
After Saturday’s crazy 48-45 victory over Alabama, Malzahn has now defeated the mighty Nick Saban three times in seven seasons as the Tigers’ head coach.
Reminded of this fact, Malzahn seemed uncomfortable addressing his success against Saban.
“He’s a great coach. Everybody knows that,” Malzahn said. “But this is Auburn, and they’re Alabama. It’s the best rivalry in college football. It’s not about me. It’s about our players. Our players believe we can beat ‘em. All the other teams for the most part hope. So I’m just real proud of our players. It’s about our players and not about me.”
For sure, players make the plays. But this victory, like the two others before it, had Malzahn’s fingerprints all over it — starting with the motivational theme all week of honoring the 1989 team that brought the Iron Bowl to Auburn to the final meaningful play, when Malzahn out-witted Saban to keep the ball away from Alabama one last time.
Malzahn’s motivational ploys started immediately after the Tigers’ perfunctory win over Samford a week earlier. Every day during the week, Malzahn played the video of the historical significance of that ‘89 Iron Bowl.
Fighting the political power brokers within the state and forcing Alabama to come to Auburn for the first time ever was the culmination of that defiance. So it was more than merely symbolic when members of the ‘89 team led the current players up South Donahue Drive on Tiger Walk to Jordan-Hare Stadium.
“The ‘89 team,” Malzahn said, “made this happen.”
Under Saban, Alabama has won five national championships and finished second twice. The Tide was a strong playoff contender again. Even so, Malzahn convinced his players that Auburn had the better team.
“Oh, damn right,” said receiver Sal Cannella, whose toe-tap touchdown catch tied the score at 24-all shortly before halftime. “That’s a fact.”
Why such confidence?
“Because we know we’re like them,” Cannella said. “We know they’re not a superior team. They’re a great team, but we’re great as well. It’s a competitor’s mentality. We all are big competitors. Just because a team has past history doing whatever, that doesn’t matter, because you better come out on that field and bring it that day.”
Perhaps no player embodied this spirit Saturday more than running back Shaun Shivers. He’s listed at 5-foot-7 and 179 pounds, and that might be generous. Auburn runs a jet sweep out of the wildcat formation with Anthony Schwartz. But Schwartz was injured on the Tigers’ first offensive play of the game. Midway through the fourth quarter, Malzahn thought it was the perfect time to run the jet sweep out of the wildcat. He turned to Shivers and made sure he remembered the play.
It was third-and-five from the Crimson Tide 11. The Tigers were just trying to get a first down. Shivers had more ambitious thoughts. When he turned the corner, Tide safety Xavier McKinney was waiting for him. McKinney is 6-1, 200. Shivers blew him up, sending McKinney’s helmet flying through the night air as Shivers burst into the end zone.
“That’s all I knew growing up. I don’t fear nobody,” Shivers said. “They put on pads just like I put on pads. I knew I just had to make it happen.”
Two plays — which turned out to be two critical plays — had Malzahn written all over them. The first came right before halftime. A screen pass to JaTarvious Whitlow went for 17 yards to the Bama 34, but it appeared that time expired. Knowing that he was out of timeouts, Malzahn asked for a review to see if there was one second remaining when Whitlow went down. In college football, the clocks stops when a first down is made to move the chains. Malzahn rushed his field goal unit onto the field and had them set during the review. After one second was put back on the clock, Auburn quickly snapped the ball, and Anders Carlson kicked a 52-yard field goal.
Saban absolutely lost it. And he was probably right. But here’s the irony. Saban has been the master of loopholes in recruiting and staff building. Malzahn found a loophole in the rule book.
Then, in the final seconds of the game, as the Tigers led by a field goal, Malzahn was determined not to punt the ball to Jaylen Waddle, who already had a 98-yard kickoff return to go with three receiving touchdowns. So he left his offense on the field, but substituted punter Arryn Siposs for a receiver. Saban pulled his punt return team and sent his defense back onto the field. But Waddle was already dropped deep and couldn’t get off the field in time.
The penalty on Alabama for 12 men on the field gave Auburn a first down and allowed the Tigers to run out the clock. Saban called it “unfair.” Yeah, about as unfair as hiring 92 more assistant coaches than NCAA rules allow and calling them “analysts.”
It capped a bittersweet regular season for the Tigers. A bowl game victory would give them 10 wins. But two of their three losses came to teams still in the playoff mix, LSU and Georgia. The other loss was at Florida.
“This day and time in college football, the highs are high and the lows are low,” Malzahn said. “It’s easy to turn and point fingers. That’s what the whole world really wants you to do. But our leadership hung in there. They didn’t flinch. We went through some tough times, too. It’s been an up and down season, but we finished on a high note. And we have a chance to win 10 games, and that’s a real special thing here in the West and playing the schedule that we play.”
This ought to quell the buyout talk. At least for another year.