Malzahn moving to a faster tempo

HOOVER, Ala. - Gus Malzahn is in a hurry to bring Auburn back to the top of the SEC.

“We’ll run our offense at a two-minute pace the entire game,” Malzahn, a Fort Smith native who returned to Auburn as head coach after last season, said at SEC media days. “Our goal is to play faster than anybody in college football.

“We feel like if you can execute our offense at a fast pace, it’s a big advantage. So we’ll be striving for that.”

The Tigers are ready to embrace Malzahn’s fast-paced philosophy after going 3-9 last season, including 0-8 in the SEC. It was Auburn’s first winless SEC record since going 0-6 in 1980 and resulted in Gene Chizik’s firing as coach two years after the Tigers won the 2010 national championship with a 14-0 record.

Malzahn, the 2010 Broyles Award winner as the nation’s top assistant as Auburn’s offensive coordinator, is now leading the program after going 9-3 at Arkansas State in his college head coaching debut last season.

Malzahn coached at Auburn in 2009-2011, so many of the Tigers either played for him or at least are familiar with him.

“It was a relief when Coach Malzahn was hired because you really didn’t have to make much of a transition,” Tigers senior defensive end Dee Ford said. “Now he’s our head coach, but he’s the same guy we all knew.

“He’s to the point - no-nonsense, let’s get to work. That’s pretty much been the lay of the land since he’s been here.”

Ford said the defense is ready for the offense to play as fast as Malzahn wants.

“That’s why we practice, to pick up that tempo,” Ford said. “We’re expecting to score fast, so as a defense we train to be ready for that.”

Auburn senior fullback Jay Prosch said the offense is gearing up for Malzahn’s pace, too.

“Coach Malzahn wants us - whenever the official drops the ball and allows it to be in play - to be ready to snap the ball,” Prosch said. “As fast as we can do it, as fast as they’ll let us do it, that’s how fast we want to be.”

But fastest in the country? Faster than the SEC’s other hurry-up offenses? Faster than Oregon?

“We’re going to go as fast as physically possible, so if we’re not the fastest, we’ll be fast enough,” Prosch said. “Let’s just say that.”

A key for how fast the Tigers can play will be finding a quarterback who can run the offense.

Malzahn said determining a starting quarterback for this season - from among four candidates - is the top priority going in preseason practice.

Quarterbacks competing for the No. 1 job are Kiehl Frazier, a junior from Springdale who played at Shiloh Christian; sophomore Jonathan Wallace; true freshman Jeremy Johnson; and junior college transfer Nick Marshall.

Frazier started the first five games last season but struggled with turnovers and was replaced by Clint Mosley, a senior last season. Wallace started the final four games.

In nine games last season, Frazier completed 62 of 116passes for 753 yards and 2 touchdowns with 8 interceptions.

Malzahn said Frazier had “a solid spring” and should benefit from having played in a hurry-up system in high school. As a freshman in 2011, he took some snaps as a quarterback but primarily as a runner.

“It probably took about halfway through spring where we actually got the pieces of the puzzle to be in the right spots so we could properly evaluate our quarterback,” Malzahn said. “Last year they went to a completely different offense and it takes a little time to get back in routine.

“Probably the last five practices it started to click and you started to see [Frazier] get more and more comfortable in this offense.”

This will be the eighth consecutive season as a college coach that Malzahn will have a different starting quarterback from the previous year, including stops at Arkansas, Tulsa, Auburn and Arkansas State.

“You go into this thing as a coach, you try to be as honest as you can with your quarterbacks,” Malzahn said. “We’ll be very upfront with our guys. Hopefully, somebody will establish themselves as the leader very early.”

The Tigers open practice Aug. 2, and offensive coordinator Rhett Lashlee said it will be challenging to give all four quarterbacks enough snaps for a fair evaluation process.

“The most important thing is getting it right,” Lashlee told AL.com. “If you get it right, everything else will fall in place. What you don’t want to do is try to rush to get it done so quick that you get it wrong.”

Wallace completed 46 of 80 passes for 720 yards and 4 touchdowns with 4 interceptions last season. He also rushed 51 times for 152 yards.

Marshall passed for 3,142 yards and 18 touchdowns and rushed for 1,095 yards and 19 touchdowns at Garden City (Kan.) Community College last season. Johnson passed for 3,193 yards and 31 touchdowns and rushed for 705 yards as a senior at Montgomery (Ala.) Carver High School.

“You have four guys who all legitimately have a chance to win the job and are capable of winning the job,” Lashlee said. “Now I’m going to have to get creative to make sure they all get the right amount of reps and do the right amount of things to where we can get all the information we need to make that decision.”

Ford said Auburn has much more talent than last season, but that the team suffered from a lack of maturity and struggled to adjust when the losses began piling up.

“There’s not much you really can say after a 3-9 season,” Ford said. “It’s obvious that we need to get back on the right track. I think we went through a thing where we just accepted everything that happened. Now it’s a new day.”

Malzahn said he’s received good reports on the players this summer from Auburn’s strength and conditioning staff.

“The No. 1 thing that our players have to do for us to be successful this year is get our edge back,” Malzahn said. “That is the mental and physical toughness, the blue-collar, hard-nosed, hit-you-in-themouth Auburn football that’s made Auburn great.

“Worry about your teammate, not about yourself. Lose the entitlement issue.

“History shows that if Auburn has its edge, it can compete for championships.”