Why Jimbo Fisher and Gus Malzahn call plays on and off field

Florida State coach Jimbo Fisher says the 'ball' part of the job is his favorite part of being a head coach, which is one reason he remains the Seminoles' playcaller. / Kim Klement, USA TODAY Sports

NEWPORT BEACH, Calif. - After Jimbo Fisher's third season at Florida State, in which the Seminoles won the Orange Bowl but suffered a shocking October defeat to North Carolina State that knocked them out of the national championship race, much of the criticism focused on his dual role as both the head coach and offensive play-caller.

The concerns about Fisher's role in the offense â?? Was he too controlling? Was his time being stretched too thin? Was he giving his assistants enough responsibility? â?? emanated mostly from the message board and talk radio world but were given at least some credence last January when offensive coordinator James Coley left for the same position at Miami.

Coley's departure to an in-state rival raised the question of whether it was time for Fisher to move to a more traditional staff model, where the head coach makes the big picture decisions and manages the game from the sidelines but allows his coordinator to call the plays.

An offensive mastermind at heart, Fisher simply wasn't ready to relinquish those duties after last season and doesn't plan on doing it any time soon.

'I've thought about it, but not really (seriously),' Fisher said. 'I love the 'ball' part of the game.'

With the college football pendulum swinging more and more toward offense, perhaps it's only fitting that tonight's BCS National Championship Game will match head coaches in Fisher and Auburn's Gus Malzahn who not only come from offensive backgrounds but remained play-callers once they moved into the top spot.

Though some head coaches have called plays in recent national title games â?? Ohio State's Jim Tressel and Oregon's Chip Kelly, for instance, had a firm grip on their team's offenses â?? it's the first time in the BCS era that two gurus have ever gone playbook-for-playbook for the crystal football.

'Some coaches I think feel more comfortable with the leadership role and a CEO-style,' Auburn offensive coordinator Rhett Lashlee said, 'but some guys just love the X's and O's of the game. That's the way (Malzahn) is.'

Though a head coach calling plays isn't new â?? Steve Spurrier, Mike McCarthy, Sean Payton are among those who've done it and won championships â?? it is an added layer of responsibility that many coaches find overwhelming.

When Ralph Friedgen became Maryland's head coach in 2001, largely on the strength of his rÃ©sumÃ© as a college and NFL offensive coordinator, he found that too much of his time was consumed by dealing with the media, boosters and recruits to effectively be in charge of the offense.

Friedgen took over play-calling when his coordinator Charlie Taaffe left in 2006 but found there were times when he would have to walk out of offensive meetings to deal with a discipline or academic issue, for instance, and leave his staff in the lurch.

'I had to raise $500,000 a year for football,' Friedgen said. 'I don't think Jimbo and Gus are having to do that.

'I talked to Billy O'Brien about it when he got the job at Penn State and I said, 'You're going to be dealing with a lot of things.' When I talked to him last summer, he was coming in at 4 o'clock in the morning to get ahead on the offensive stuff so when he had to deal with those other things, at least the offense was moving forward. It gets to be a grind after awhile.'

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Sometimes, though, that grind is a necessity.

When David Cutcliffe got his first college head coaching job at Ole Miss in 1999, he said he could not hire a staff familiar enough with the offense he ran as Tennessee's coordinator to hand off play-calling. Instead, he called the offense himself from the field as opposed to his normal view from the press box.

'I loved calling the plays from up top,' he said. 'You can't see the field the same way on the sideline. I don't care who you are; you don't see everything. It's helpful if you've got a guy who's been with 10 years who knows what you need to hear about vision.'

By the time Cutcliffe got the job at Duke in 2008, however, he had groomed his former graduate assistant Kurt Roper enough to entrust him with the entire offense. Since then, Cutcliffe said he has taken a more active role in coaching the special teams and defense, but Roper's recent departure for Florida will force him to re-evaluate his staff makeup and his own responsibilities.

Baca Juga

With Duke's program now much improved from when he took over, however, Cutcliffe said time constraints aren't as big of a concern.

'Walking in the door there, you can only imagine,' he said. 'It was 20 hours a day of a lot of things I had to do and managing our team. We had way too many other things to accomplish. From a football standpoint, I get my fix from practice. I don't have to call the plays.'

Texas A&M coach Kevin Sumlin also found the responsibilities of being head coach too great to balance with play-calling when he got the job at Houston in 2008 after making his reputation as Oklahoma's offensive coordinator.

Since then, he has cycled through numerous coordinators including Dana Holgorsen, Kliff Kingsbury and now Jake Spavital but has always allowed them to operate with a great degree of autonomy. Sumlin gives them input when he feels it is warranted, whether it's in meetings during the week or in between series during a game.

'As a play-caller, I think there's a rhythm to what you're doing, and the one thing that used to bother me was when people would throw different ideas out (during a series) and you're on a different track,' Sumlin said. 'There are certain things you see, that you know are there just from experience, but you never really want to derail somebody when your thought process is different. Whatever the offense is, the personality comes through, and I think you have to allow that to happen.

'There's a lot of things that happen to you as a head coach, especially at this level, so when I have guys that understand and know what we're trying to do, I'm just a lot more comfortable with that.'

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Though both Fisher and Malzahn are at programs with significant external demands, they seem to have little trouble balancing and X-and-O responsibilities.

After 15 years coaching high school football, where the head coach has to do it all anyway, Malzahn is more comfortable calling the offense. The difference is that he trusts the 30-year old Lashlee, who played quarterback for him in high school and has been his second brain ever since, to do the majority of game-planning work during the week before Malzahn jumps back into the offense on Thursday and Friday.

'A place like Auburn, you're just pulled so many different directions,' Lashlee said. 'He can't be in all the meetings, in all the game-planning, but he trusts us and he's run his system so long there's a level of comfort.'

For Fisher, calling plays has been particularly beneficial this season, giving him a direct line into quarterback Jameis Winston. One of the main criticisms of Fisher as a play-caller has been the tendency to get very conservative, but his level of trust in Winston has emboldened him and had a calming effect on the entire team.

'When he calls the play, Jameis knows what he's thinking,' quarterbacks coach Randy Sanders said. 'He knows when we're really taking a shot or checking it down to the open receiver underneath. I think that's one of the great benefits of having Jimbo in that role.

'I always thought it would be easier to call plays as a head coach because you know exactly how you want the game to go, what you're anticipating, when to take chances, when not to. Sometimes when you're a coordinator, you may call something and the head coach says, 'Oooh, I didn't really want that right now.' Well, it's too late.'

Fisher also offered some insight into the way his mind works Sunday when he talked about a game log he has kept for the past 15 years of every offensive and defensive coordinator he's faced. Someone that detail-oriented probably just isn't wired to give up something as critical to their personality as calling plays.

'Time management, I think that's the key,' Fisher said. 'You've got to be very organized to have the structure and (understand) the time constraints of what you have to do every day and have people in place you can delegate to and make sure they get things done. We have a great staff that way.'

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