JONESBORO — Cliff Mitchell settled into a chair Wednesday in the Templeton Room at Arkansas State’s football facility and summed up the shift in the Red Wolves’ offensive tempo under new coach Gus Malzahn.
“We went fast last year,” said Mitchell, a redshirt junior and ASU’s returning right guard, “but this is a whole new level of fast.”
Donning pads for the first time this spring Wednesday, the Red Wolves got an idea about just how fast Malzahn and offensive coordinator Rhett Lashlee expect them to operate this season after working mostly out of twoback running formations as the staff evaluates which players can keep up.
“We started out at a decent pace but lost our edge for a while,” Malzahn said. “It needs to be a little [more] mental toughness they need to fight through. We really want them to understand the pace and attention to detail we need.”
ASU’s offensive players grew accustomed to chewing up yardage quickly under former Coach Hugh Freeze, who shared Malzahn’s desire to use an uptempo style that leaves opposing defenses little time to adjust to formations or rest between plays.
The Red Wolves were No. 52 nationally in time of possession at 30 minutes, 4.62 seconds per game last season, but their 1,016 plays tied for the ninth-most nationally with Georgia as ASU piled up an average of more than 447.6 yards of total offense per game.
But that speed — using roughly 23.1 seconds to ex- ecute a play — is sluggish compared to what Malzahn’s offenses have done during his stints as offensive coordinator at Tulsa and Auburn.
“We want to practice faster than a regular game,” Malzahn said. “We want the game to seem slow.
“It’s a matter of fatigue and being mentally tougher. We’re straining our guys. There’s not a whole lot of standing around out there.”
Under Malzahn, neither Tulsa nor Auburn ranked higher than 75th in the country in time of possession, including his 2007 Tulsa team that was on the field an average of 28:46 per game and took an average of only 21.5 seconds to run a play.
During his two seasons at Tulsa, Malzahn’s offenses ranked first and second nationally in total plays, including 1,126 during a 2007 season in which the Golden Hurricane led the NCAA in total offense (543.9 yards per game) en route to a 10-4 record.
After three practices this spring, the Red Wolves keenly understand Malzahn has a similar performance in mind for next season.
“It’s the two-minute drill the whole game,” ASU quarterback Ryan Aplin said. “We finish a play, look up, get the next [play] from the sideline and go. There are some checks [at the line of scrimmage], but with how fast we go, we’re not going to need them because the defense won’t have time to adjust.”
Outside of improving the Red Wolves’ stamina, ASU’s coaching staff is also getting its first in-person evaluation of returning players since Malzahn was hired in December.
“After you watch film from the first day in pads, you have a good feel for what guys can do what,” Malzahn said. “With the physical part, guys either have it or they don’t, and we’ll learn a lot off today’s film.”
Lashlee, who was the offensive coordinator at Samford last season, said he isn’t intent on installing large chunks of the Red Wolves’ playbook during spring workouts.
Instead, the aim is to get players accustomed to the pace of execution and ensure that breakdowns in alignments at the line of scrimmage, missed blocking assignments or poor decision making aren’t the result of fatigue.
“You can’t get ahead of yourself,” Lashlee said. “What we’re trying to do is get a foundation. Right now, it’s not a matter of how many plays we have in. It’s a matter of are we executing the ones in place the right way and well.”
Mitchell said the offensive concepts haven’t been all that confusing. It’s just getting adjusted to the new pace.
“It’s easy for us to pick up on it, and there’s not a big difference,” Mitchell said. “Some of the concepts are different, some of the terminology is different, but we’ve just got to go faster, faster, faster.”
Sports, Pages 15 on 03/29/2012