No more angry Gus on Auburn's sidelines

AUBURN | Angry Gus will no longer be roaming Auburn’s sidelines.

So says Gus Malzahn, who gave up his play-calling duties last week to concentrate on being Auburn’s head coach.

“It was very refreshing last week during practice, during preparations. I wasn't coaching angry out there Saturday and I think that was very big,” Malzahn said. “It was very refreshing for me and that's what I'm going to do moving forward.”

Even Auburn’s defensive players took notice in the days leading up to Auburn's upset win over LSU last Saturday.

“He was more calm, more relaxed,” senior defensive back Rudy Ford said. “He just let us have more fun. He came in energized throughout the whole week. He told some jokes on the screen, played music. He just had us all relaxed and let us go play ball.”

The usually stoic Malzahn even had jokes during his Tuesday press conference. When asked what his wife, Kristi, thought about this decision, he smiled, paused, turned to SID Kirk Sampson and said, "Um, that's probably it," before walking out, bringing laughter from the assembled media.

As far as his day-to-day duties, Malzahn said he’ll still be involved with the offense, along with the defense and special teams as he takes a more CEO approach to running the program.

“I felt like I was too negative the first couple of games. That’s probably the best way to put it. I was living and dying with every play,” Malzahn said. “It was real refreshing for me to be on the opposite end of that, where you don’t live and die with every play. You can kind of look ahead and see the big picture.”

Malzahn came into the season planning to take more control of the offense including game-planning and play-calling. He began to realize that was a mistake after Auburn’s opening 19-13 loss to Clemson. That feeling became much stronger after a 29-16 loss to Texas A&M that dropped the Tigers to 1-2 on the season.

“You do something for so long and then sometimes reality hits you,” Malzahn said. “It hit me after game one. Even game two and game three I slowly started letting Rhett (Lashlee) and Herb (Hand) do more and more. It finally got to a point that this is what's best for our team.

“This day and time and in this league, I just don't think it's realistic. That's what hit me and that's how we got to this point. I feel very good about moving forward with where we're at. We've got the potential to grow a lot on offense.”