Ellis Johnson's ability to adapt

[Saniflush]

NEWPORT BEACH, California – Ellis Johnson has spent this season tinkering, adjusting and tweaking his 4-2-5 defense, forever fixing one piece only to have another part come unhinged on the other side.

You can't teach an old dog new tricks, the saying goes.

Unless he never had a favorite trick in the first place, an addendum Johnson has proven over and over again, molding an opportunistic Auburn defense with a penchant for making timely plays to bring the Tigers to the cusp of tonight's BCS National Championship against Florida State.

"The key is to make sure the players follow it. It doesn't do any good to have all these great ideas if you can't get it to the kids," Johnson said. "But I've never been married to the system. I've always felt like you have to be married to your personnel."

The foundation of Johnson's 4-2-5 is flexibility, an attribute that has paid off time and time again for Auburn's defense this season.

Back when Johnson was first hired, he planned to base the defense around zone coverages, mixing and matching a wide variety of sub-packages and exotic formations to match up against any different offense, all with the same base personnel.

But a funny thing happened in the season-opener.

In talking to some of his coaching contacts around the country, Johnson heard time and time again that a team shouldn't play much zone against Mike Leach's Air Raid, not any team that wanted to have a chance.

"We were forced into a game plan that we worked over a week and a half to play a lot of man," Johnson said. "When we played them, we realized we had great man cover skills out back."

In addition, the emergence of Robenson Therezie, more of a nickel corner than the true "Star" hybrid that Johnson wants – the hybrid is normally more of a linebacker – meant that Auburn had better man-to-man capability than Auburn's defensive coordinator originally anticipated.

Originally planning to play at least 60 percent zone, Johnson found himself relying on man-to-man coverages heavily through the first half of the season, almost too much.

No team today can play straight man-to-man all the time, not against the sophisticated passing schemes and talented quarterbacks that dot the college football landscape, but Auburn had played so much man-to-man that the Tigers started showing big problems in zone coverage.

So Johnson adjusted again.

"About midseason, we started practicing zone on the perimeter much, much more, even if we weren't going to use it in the game plan," Johnson said.

Without even knowing it, Johnson was setting his team up well to handle a big blow.

In the final practice before Auburn took on Texas A&M, safety Josh Holsey tore his ACL, leaving the Tigers with just six defensive backs to play four positions in the secondary.

Playing man-to-man on every snap wears out a defensive back. With fewer bodies on the field, Auburn started mixing and matching zone, along with its man-to-man base.

"What we try to do is what's best for the opponent, with our scheme and what we're running," safeties coach Charlie Harbison said. "Whatever we need to do, depending on who we face, we've got to have that flexibility. You can't just be pigeonholed."

Holsey's injury created another set of problems.

Physical enough to play like a linebacker in the box, Holsey had been key to Auburn's ability to shift into any formation other than its base defense. With so few defensive backs – and nobody else with Holsey's particular skill set – Johnson has stayed mostly in his 4-2-5 base defense and a dime package where an extra defensive back replaces a linebacker.

Now, most of the Tigers' defensive flexibility comes from its personnel substitutions.

"We can put better pass rushers on the field, but it's still a four-man front," Johnson said. "Josh Holsey was our starting dime linebacker, and if somebody ran a draw on third-and-7, he could get off a block and tackle. ... We really lost that without him."

Auburn's defense always faced an uphill climb this season.

Unlike the offense, where most of the older players knew Gus Malzahn's scheme, Auburn's defenders are playing for their third coordinator in as many years.

What Johnson has been able to bring to the unit is a flexibility – and a willingness to listen to his players – that Auburn hasn't always had at defensive coordinator.

Case in point: Auburn debuted a five-man front against LSU, a strategy that seemed to work in theory – because of the bigger bodies on the field – but forced the Tigers' defensive linemen to play techniques they hadn't learned yet.

Johnson scrapped the formation, and the defense responded,

In the weeks that followed, Johnson and defensive line coach Rodney Garner focused on those techniques, and now the Tigers have used that package extensively, mostly in short-yardage, and it has worked well, particularly on fourth down.

"His willingness to change probably has been the most different," safety Jermaine Whitehead said. "He'll come in sometimes with our defensive players, ask us what we like to do, what we see on film, what's the best way to go at it.  ... I think he listens to the players as much as he listens to the coaches."

In the process, Johnson has poked and prodded and cajoled his unit into an opportunistic, bend-but-don't-break defense that has come up with a big play almost every time the Tigers needed one in crunch time.

Handed complete control of the defense by Malzahn, Johnson has responded with one of his best coaching jobs, showing the same ingenuity and versatility that marks Malzahn's offenses.

"Ellis is one of the best in the business," Malzahn said. "I have a lot of confidence in him. He is very good at in-game adjustments, he's a veteran guy, and he doesn't get too high or too low."
In other words, Johnson had the perfect set of tools to keep this Auburn defense up and running.   

[bottomfeeder]

Wow! Thank you for posting this. WDE!