Hurry-up offenses proliferate in SEC

One thing you’ll see less of in SEC football games this year: huddles.

About half of the league’s teams, including three of the four with new head coaches, are committed to playing up-tempo, no-huddle offenses — a trend that perhaps signals a shift in the on-field culture of SEC football.

And as with most changes in the conference, this one is controversial, pitting the offensive innovators against the old-school coaches.

SEC teams that are committed to hurry-up styles as their normal offensive scheme include Texas A&M and Ole Miss, both of which found success with the method last year; Auburn, Kentucky and Tennessee, all of which have new coaches; and Missouri. Georgia also will use a no-huddle scheme frequently, as it has done the past two seasons, but the Bulldogs don’t tend to snap the ball at maximum speed.

The controversy, which bubbled over at SEC Media Days last week, goes beyond stylistic preference to the question of whether the fast-paced offenses increase injury risk by limiting defensive substitutions and keeping fatigued players on the field.

On one side of the debate, there’s new Auburn coach Gus Malzahn, who declared the Tigers’ offense “will run at a two-minute pace the entire game” and “play faster than anybody in college football.” As for criticism that such a style is unsafe, Malzahn replied: “When I first heard that, to be honest with you, I thought it was a joke.”

On the other side, there’s new Arkansas coach Bret Bielema, who said he favors “normal American football” and believes players clearly are more vulnerable to injury in a hurry-up game. As for Malzahn’s dismissal of such concerns as a joke, Bielema bristled: “I’m not a comedian.”

Up-tempo offenses are not new, dating to at least the 1988 Cincinnati Bengals, but have been slower to catch on in the SEC than in some other leagues.

The proponents of fast-paced offense like it because, if all goes as designed, it allows more plays and thus more scoring opportunities in a game, can discombobulate the defense and can prevent the defense from substituting (or else risk a too-many-players-on-the-field penalty) unless the offense does so.

“Defenses don’t like it because they get real tired and can’t give everything they’ve got on every play,” Ole Miss wide receiver Donte Moncrief said. “Once a defense gets tired, that’s when we throw the deep ball.”

Of course, if all does not go as designed, an offense can be three-and-out in a hurry, sending its defensive unit back onto the field without much of a breather.

Alabama coach Nick Saban said he has “only two questions” about the appropriateness of up-tempo offense, which his program has not embraced during its run of three BCS championships in four years:

1. “Should we allow football to be a continuous game? Is that the way the game was designed to be played?”

2. “The increased number of plays that players play in the game, are there any safety issues in that?”

“I don’t know the answers,” Saban said. “But I think those are the questions that need to be asked to know whether there needs to be any rules (changes) that affect the tempo of the game.”

Malzahn and Bielema do have answers — just not the same ones.

Malzahn: “As far as health or safety issues, that’s like saying the defense shouldn’t blitz after a first down because they’re a little fatigued and there’s liable to be a big collision in the backfield. If you’re going to look at rule changes, we need to look at the guys on defense that are faking injuries to slow down these pace teams. You see more and more teams using pace. That’s where college football’s going. I think you’ll see it more and more at the next level also.”

Bielema: “All I know is there are times when a … player is on the field for an extended amount of time without a break. If that exposes him to a risk of injury, then that’s my fault. The problem people have is looking at it just from an offensive or defensive point of view. I’m looking at it from a head coach’s point of view that the personal well-being and safety of my players is paramount.”

Bielema has proposed a rule change allowing a 15-second defensive substitution period after a first down. Ole Miss coach Hugh Freeze opposes that because “I don’t think there’s any proof out there that there are any kind of safety concerns.”

Georgia coach Mark Richt’s concern is how referees manage the hurry-up scenarios.

“If an offensive team is making a substitution and the defense is getting their substitution, not only do the officials need to let the defenders get on the field, they need to give them a reasonable amount of time to get lined up and get set,” Richt said. “I’ve seen a lot of balls snapped when the offensive team isn’t even quite set.

“If you want to go fast, great. We like to go fast at times. I was going fast back at Florida State in 1993. If teams are not substituting fast enough because they’re not organized, that’s their fault. But if you’re highly organized, you’re running your guys on the field and they’re not even set when the ball is snapped, that’s the thing that might need to slow down just a tad.”