By Andrew Gribble
Published: August 22, 2010
The pressure to win in the SEC permeates every facet of its respective football programs.
From the round-the-clock recruiting all the way to how landscapers cut the grass on game days, there isn’t a decision made that doesn’t at least consider how it will affect the team’s ability to win more games and win them now.
At Auburn, nowhere is it displayed more than by the homegrown flavor of offensive coordinator Gus Malzahn’s duo of right-hand assistants both of whom have known him since the birth of his fast-paced, no-huddle spread offense.
In graduate assistant Rhett Lashlee, Malzahn has the second player who ever quarterbacked the offense he runs today. In offensive quality control assistant Elijah Drinkwitz, Malzahn has the first brave soul who had to fill his shoes as the offensive coordinator at Springdale (Ark.) High after he infamously joined Houston Nutt at Arkansas.
Together, they’ve helped make life easier for one of the biggest offensive names in college football by simply being themselves — longtime followers and practitioners of Malzahn’s unique take on scoring points.
“Time is of the essence,” Malzahn said. “There’s not time to break people in, especially in a situation like this where we have to find ways to get better each year.”
Auburn received more than 500 applications from high school and college coaches across the country when its offensive quality control position opened during the offseason. If Drinkwitz would have declined when Malzahn originally contacted him to gauge his interest, maybe the 499 others would have had a chance.
Fair? Maybe not on the surface.
It’s all about who you know, a methodology that is certainly not unique to college football.
“I’m sure there are a lot of people who can do this job,” Drinkwitz said. “I think it’s just a great benefit for him to work with people he knows and trusts. I think no matter what you do, you want to work with people you know and trust and they know what you’re about.”
‘No-brainer’ for Lashlee
Lashlee first met Malzahn as a seventh grader. Malzahn, then a first-year coach at Shiloh Christian, was running a pro-style offense. The next year, Malzahn unveiled his patented attack, which helped advance Shiloh Christian to the state championship game and made the school instantly famous as the nation’s top offense.
Lashlee, as an eighth grader running the same offense, was hooked.
“It just kind of exploded,” Lashlee said.
Lashlee played a big part in the eruption. He started at quarterback for Malzahn as a sophomore and led his team to three consecutive title appearances, winning two. On the way, he threw 171 touchdown passes, a national record, and saw Malzahn leave for
Springdale High before his senior season.
Lashlee played under Nutt as a walk-on for two seasons before he returned to Springdale as a volunteer quarterbacks coach with Malzahn. He was one of Mitch Mustain’s direct supervisors for Mustain’s junior and senior seasons, the two most offensively successful seasons in school history, before he followed Malzahn to Arkansas as a graduate assistant.
“The way coach is, the way he is with his quarterbacks because of what he expects out of them in his system, he naturally becomes close with them,” Lashlee said. “He’s one of the main reasons why I realized what I wanted to do with my life was coach and impact young guys’ lives.”
Lashlee stayed in Arkansas when Malzahn took over as Tulsa’s offensive coordinator. He was in the process of getting married, so he opted to use his freshly earned marketing degree and take a gig with VYPE Magazine in northwest Arkansas.
When his phone rang days after Malzahn took a job under Gene Chizik at Auburn, Lashlee barley let Malzahn get the words out of his mouth.
“Not going to Tulsa made no sense logically, but it was the best thing for me and my family at the time and it turns out it was a great blessing,” Lashlee said.
“It was a no-brainer.”
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