Auburn vs. LSU

Auburn offensive coordinator Rhett Lashlee and head coach Gus Malzahn talk on the sidelines during the first half against LSU Saturday Sept. 24, 2016, at Jordan Hare Stadium in Auburn, Ala. (Julie Bennett/jbennett@al.com)

(JULIE BENNETT)

All off-season, Gus Malzahn was selling a vision for Auburn's 2016 season in which he was going to be hands on in all aspects of the offense.

Gone were the days of being a "CEO," a title he maligned on numerous occasions during the spring and summer when he looked back at what went wrong for Auburn in 2015.

This year was to be different because Malzahn was going to delve into all the minutiae and be personally involved with every position group on offense.

"One thing that really hit me pretty hard is that I got to be more active with the daily X's and O's and coaching that goes with that," Malzahn told the Wall Street Journal last month. "At the end of the day, I'm a football coach. That's what I look at as my strength."

After a bizarre game plan at quarterback in the season-opening loss to Clemson that was a colossal failure, Malzahn says he realized he may have gone too far in his quest for coaching control in correcting the errs of last season.

After padding stats against Arkansas State, the Auburn offense again lacked consistency against Texas A&M and Malzahn admitted his play calling "hadn't been very good."

For last week's 18-13 win over LSU, Malzahn relinquished play-calling duties to offensive coordinator Rhett Lashlee.

Malzahn's days as a play caller are over, he says, because it's not "realistic" for an SEC head coach to prepare for that in-game responsibility in addition to the other tasks and decision that reach their desk during the course of a given week.

"When you've been coaching a long time, when you've been doing something for 25 years, that's what you're used to doing," Malzahn said. "That was really my plan in the off-season, was to be more involved like I talked about. Sometimes reality hits you. In this day and time in this league, to be the head coach and call an offense is not realistic, at least for me.

"It hit me after that first game. What's best for our team, 100 percent is what's best. We've got very good offensive coaches that will definitely do a great job with that, I believe. I think we'll get nothing but better."

The timing of this 180-degree shift in Malzahn's approach came at a pivotal time in Auburn's season, as the Tigers entered last week's game riding a seven-game home losing streak to Power 5 opponents, as well his tenure on the Plains.

As AL.com reported Saturday, it also was in line with a suggestion to Malzahn from an influential booster as to how he could best go about keeping his job.

Malzahn insisted those inside or connected to the Auburn football program had "zero" influence on his decision to hand over play-calling responsibilities to Lashlee.

"Zero," Malzahn said. "I'm the one that decided."

Players said Malzahn was more calm and relaxed than usual leading up to last week's game.

"He just let us have more fun, came in energized throughout the whole week," senior defensive back Rudy Ford said. "Told some jokes on the screen, played music. He just had us all relaxed and let us go play ball."

Malzahn was noticeably more at ease during Saturday's game, during which he was usually lined up more than 20 yards away from the line of scrimmage, where Lashlee signaled in plays, and was also more engaged with the defense.

"Coach Malzahn kind of sat back, played the head coach role overseeing everything," Wide receiver Ryan Davis said. "He let coach Lashlee do him and let the offensive coordinator role, basically just see how he does."

Malzahn said he "wasn't caught up in the next play," as much on Saturday and that had been an issue during the first three games.

On Tuesday, his mood was uncharacteristically light-hearted for a game week, even with a lowly opponent like 33-point underdog ULM coming to town.

"I wasn't coaching angry out there Saturday," said Malzahn, who admitted to doing so "at times" during the first three games of the season. "I think that's very big. It was very refreshing for me. That's what I'm going to do moving forward. ... I felt like I was too negative the first couple of games. (I was) living and dying with every play."

That mentality will now be for Lashlee, who previously called plays during Auburn's win at Texas A&M last season, another pivotal game for the Tigers.

Malzahn said he's going to focus more on the personal aspects of coaching with both his players and staff during the week and game management on Saturdays.

"The biggest difference is I'm not going to be in that film room for 20 hours a day," he said. "I'm going to let (Lashlee and offensive line coach Herb Hand) do it now."

What Lashlee and Hand will be focusing on this week is improving performance in the Red Zone, where Auburn ranks 127th of 128 FBS teams in terms of touchdown percentage.

"That's our No.1 focus right now," Malzahn said. "We're going to spend more time in practice, we're going to evaluate the whole deal in the Red Zone.

"If we can solve that, think we can be a pretty good offense."