To the coaches who’ve gone against Gus Malzahn for more than a decade during his time calling plays in the SEC, a sense of tactical arrogance always permeated from his best teams.
When Gus Malzahn first coached and coordinated at Auburn, he was going to do things the way he knew how — the tempo cranked, the tendencies be damned and that predictability empowered like battering ram as opposed to a liability. You knew Gus Malzahn would only run counter to one direction and power to another. Good luck stopping it. You knew he’d run the same buck sweep with the pin and pull. Have fun coaching up antidotes to it in practice all week.
So that’s why any skepticism about Gus Malzahn’s ability to adapt to his new job as the coach at UCF, a job long percolating with potential, should be greeted with a hearty chuckle. He's taken a job where a majority of the league — perhaps everybody but Cincinnati — has to brace themselves for Malzahn entering games with a talent advantage.
“They are going to have better players 90-something percent of the time,” said a veteran SEC assistant who is familiar with Malzahn. “I think he operated much better when he was the play caller. Part of the thing that made them good was that he didn’t stray. This is what we do. This is how we do it. The years they had good personnel, they were hard to stop.”
That sums up why Malzahn’s hire is a savvy one by new athletic director Terry Mohajir. Gus Malzahn is going to always have good personnel at UCF. Malzahn certainly read the talking points at his news conference on Monday, as he delivered the predictable chum for fans by declaring UCF will be “in the Final Four in a short period of time.”
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When Gus Malzahn first coached and coordinated at Auburn, he was going to do things the way he knew how — the tempo cranked, the tendencies be damned and that predictability empowered like battering ram as opposed to a liability. You knew Gus Malzahn would only run counter to one direction and power to another. Good luck stopping it. You knew he’d run the same buck sweep with the pin and pull. Have fun coaching up antidotes to it in practice all week.
So that’s why any skepticism about Gus Malzahn’s ability to adapt to his new job as the coach at UCF, a job long percolating with potential, should be greeted with a hearty chuckle. He's taken a job where a majority of the league — perhaps everybody but Cincinnati — has to brace themselves for Malzahn entering games with a talent advantage.
“They are going to have better players 90-something percent of the time,” said a veteran SEC assistant who is familiar with Malzahn. “I think he operated much better when he was the play caller. Part of the thing that made them good was that he didn’t stray. This is what we do. This is how we do it. The years they had good personnel, they were hard to stop.”
That sums up why Malzahn’s hire is a savvy one by new athletic director Terry Mohajir. Gus Malzahn is going to always have good personnel at UCF. Malzahn certainly read the talking points at his news conference on Monday, as he delivered the predictable chum for fans by declaring UCF will be “in the Final Four in a short period of time.”
More:
Can Gus Malzahn's hire drive UCF into the Power Five?
Malzahn's consistency and credibility certainly give UCF a reputational boost — and with better players than most AAC opponents, Malzahn's offense will be hard to stop.
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