Defense in the HUNH

We've exhaustively covered the infusion of Chad Morris' new Hurry-Up, No-Huddle offense in part by examining the success of the man who invented the approach.

In this piece that ran a few days ago, we cited excerpts from Gus Malzahn's book "The Hurry-up, No-Huddle: An offensive philosophy" in a story that delved into Malzahn's first year at Auburn in 2009.

Malzahn also touched on the ideal defensive philosophy to pair with a HUNH offense, and the following excerpt from the book is interesting from a Clemson context:

"You also need to be aggressive on defense. One of your biggest fears would be for a team to hold the ball with long drives and shorten the game."

Aggression is one of the fundamental parts of Dabo Swinney's overall approach as a head coach. It's one of the reasons he decided to part ways with Vic Koenning in 2008, and it's why he went after Kevin Steele as Koenning's replacement.

Clemson's number of big plays allowed has gone up under Steele, but so have the tackles for loss and sacks. Steele has been aggressive, and that ain't gonna change this year. In fact, the mentality might be enhanced given the circumstances.

The biggest concern right now on defense is depth on the defensive line, and struggles up front could theoretically allow opposing offenses to have better success running the ball and thus play this game of keep-away that is feared by Malzahn and Morris.

Another interesting quote from the book:

"One of the biggest challenges a coach will face when using the hurry-up, no-huddle philosophy is that you have to have the mentality that if you get beat, it may be by a lot because you are lengthening the game. We have been in a few games where we were behind three or four touchdowns early in the game. If we had not had this mentality, we would have lost them all. The hardest losses for coaches are the close ones. ... More often than not the blowouts seem to be a little easier to live with in the long run."

Fans in these parts don't need to be reminded that Auburn was down big in the third game last season, 17-0 at home to Clemson, only to come back and win in overtime. Auburn was also down double digits to South Carolina before coming back to win.

And, of course, there was the mother of all comebacks in the regular-season finale at Alabama -- the rebound from a 24-0 deficit is still hard to believe, all these months later.

On to some Tuesday links...

Gene Sapakoff fires up his Braggin' Rights Barometer and gets a preseason readout of Sakerlina 24, Clemson 17. Sounds about right for now.

The ACC Sports Journal presents its preseason power rankings and ... wow on Maryland at No. 3. Clemson, by the way, checks in at No. 6.

Here's a Q&A with Paul Johnson, and he correctly diagnoses the Jackets' biggest problem last season.

"I think turnovers will be huge. We’ve got to do a better job of taking care of the ball, and we’ve got to get it more. And I think if we do that, we’ve got a chance to be OK. We would have won a lot more games last year if we’d have done that."

The Dothan Eagle quotes Dabo Swinney saying he knows Troy won't be intimidated Saturday.

Swinney, who grew up in Alabama and played and coached at the University of Alabama, is very familiar with Troy head coach Larry Blakeney.

He’s also aware of Troy’s recent history with big-name schools, including victories over Missouri (2004) and Oklahoma State (2007) at home. He knows about Troy taking a 31-3 lead at LSU in 2008 before falling 40-31, and is aware of the Trojans’ 41-38 loss last year at an 11-win Oklahoma State team.

“They’ll be coming here to win, I promise you that,” Swinney said. “They’ve been to Nebraska, Florida State, LSU… they’ve been everywhere. They’ll come here to win. That’s a fact. I’ve watched them my whole life. I’m very respectful of their program.”

Saturday's matchup to watch: LT Phillip Price vs. end Jonathan Massaquoi.

“He is probably as good a rush end as we’ll see all year,” Swinney said. “He’s a really good player coming off the edge. That’ll be a challenge for our tackles."

Richard Deitsch has an excellent college football roundtable with two of my favorite scribes, but I think Andy Staples and Stewart Mandel are way off on their Brent Musberger take.

He strikes me as a shell of the guy who used to be at the Esso Club and Death Valley for all those big games in the 1980s.



LW