Don’t count Chuck Oliver among those who believe Gus Malzahn’s job as Auburn head football coach might be in jeopardy heading into 2019.

The Atlanta-based sports talk radio host said Thursday he sees “no realistic scenario” where Malzahn is fired at the end of the coming season. Las Vegas has Auburn pegged as an underdog in at least five games this fall, and Oliver admitted that such a finish would make Malzahn’s standing with the Tigers “pretty shaky.”

“Not to the point where Auburn would have a new head coach,” Oliver said prior to his appearance at the 25th annual L’Arche Football Preview Dinner in Mobile. “There is no realistic scenario (where Malzahn is fired) — if they go 2-10, that’s different. But that’s not a realistic scenario for Auburn. I think the only ramification would be, a year from now, we’re talking about Gus Malzahn. I don’t believe that in December we’ll be talking about ‘who is Auburn going to get to be their head coach.’ The defense is too good. I really like Boobie (Whitlow) at running back; he reminds me of … Tre Mason, the way he moves into the line, a little bit of hesitation, let the blocks happen, all that stuff. He’s got a habit of kind of collecting tacklers. … I think 7-5 would be a disappointment. But the defense is too good, they’ll be able to run the football, and they have a pretty impressive collection of receivers.”

Quarterback, of course, will be a key for the Tigers this season. Malzahn said at the conclusion of spring practice that redshirt freshman Joey Gatewood and true freshman Bo Nix would continue to compete for the job into the fall.

That decision led to the departure of junior Malik Willis, who was the primary back-up the last two seasons to Jarrett Stidham, a fourth-round draft pick of the NFL’s New England Patriots last month. Oliver — whose “Southern Sports Today” airs on 48 stations around the Southeast, including in Auburn, Huntsville, Mobile, Montgomery and Tuscaloosa — said he had long figured Willis was the heir apparent with the Tigers.

“I was really disappointed with Malik Willis not being able to put a hammer-lock on that job,” Oliver said. “He had a two-year headstart (on Gatewood and Nix). I think what happened a little bit was, he showed up as a true freshman and, even being the No. 2 behind a guy like Jarrett Stidham, for an 18-year-old kid, that’s not nothing. After a two-year apprenticeship, we all know how it works. ‘I was the back-up, and then I was the back-up again, and now he’s in the NFL. So, I’m going to be the starter next year.’ But what happened to Malik was, ‘I’m the back-up with Jarrett Stidham, (then) I’m third-team without Jarrett Stidham on the roster anymore?’ That’s why everybody knew after spring practice that he was going to transfer.”

Malzahn’s Auburn offenses have excelled with dual-threat quarterbacks such as Cam Newton and Nick Marshall, but were less-consistent with the likes of Stidham and Sean White at the controls. That led Oliver to wonder how Nix — who is considered more of a pocket passer — will fit in the Tigers’ offense.

Oliver stopped short of predicting who will be Auburn’s starting quarterback in 2019, but seemed to hint that Gatewood had the best shot at success.

“We’ve all seen Gus Malzahn’s offense, and it’s always been at its best when it has that running element out of the quarterback,” Oliver said. “You didn’t have it Sean White, you didn’t have it with Jarrett Stidham. I had Gus Malzahn tell me before the 2016 season about Sean White ‘he ran a 4.5 40 at that Nike camp.’ Well that’s just running fast in a straight line, that’s not Nick Marshall running ability. That just means you have a good 40 time. It really surprised me that it wasn’t Malik, but when it’s Joey Gatewood and Bo Nix, it’s easy to connect those dots that you’re going to get two distinct styles of quarterback play this year. It would really impress me if Bo Nix is able to do that, because playing quarterback in the SEC is not an easy thing to do, especially as a true freshman. I’m excited to see Joey Gatewood, though, and maybe that he can bring that (running) element back.”

Oliver addressed a number of other college football topics, including …

If Clemson’s 48-16 win over Alabama was really a surprise: “Clemson winning the national championship was not a surprise. Doing THAT? I’ll put it this way, and I said this on the air the day after the game happened, I only kept watching the game because it was the national championship game. If that had been a game in the middle of October, everybody in this room would have turned it off in the middle of the third quarter. We all kept watching because ‘well, it’s the only game I’ll get to watch until September.’ That’s never, ever supposed to be the case. And there was nothing flukish about it, there was nothing like ‘oh, where did that come from?’ You saw where it came from, a bunch of freshmen running around for Clemson.”

The lack of depth in the ACC, as compared to the SEC: “Obviously, you have Clemson leading the way, but the weird thing about the ACC is, the next tier of teams has changed. It’s supposed to be Louisville, Florida State and Virginia Tech, but in addition to just disappointing seasons last year, for instance in Blacksburg, there’s a culture problem there, which with Justin Fuente is the last thing I ever expected. So some of the blue bloods that give us a reason to watch the ACC in November — there wasn’t a reason to watch the ACC in November. I knew whoever was coming out of the Coastal Division, they can’t beat Clemson in Charlotte. That’s just not going to happen. When N.C. State, even with sixth-year quarterback Ryan Finley and all those stud receivers leading the way, replacing all that stud talent on defense — they just kind of folded their tent, that settled everything in the Atlantic Division. In the SEC, you don’t have that. Even when you get to the championship game, even when ‘this’ team is way better than ‘that’ one, there always seems to be a little bit of a chance. You don’t have those scenarios in the ACC. You can have a team that has just bludgeoned their way through the 12-game slate including the title game. That’s really the difference, how deep into the conference the real high-quality football goes.”

His preseason Top 5 for 2019: “Look at Texas A&M’s schedule — you’ll see four of them. They’ve got Bama, Georgia, Clemson and LSU, so that’s four of my top 5. And probably right after that is Ohio State. Even losing a Top 15 (draft pick) quarterback in Dwayne Haskins, it’s enough depth on both lines of scrimmage, that you’re going to have a chance to get a new quarterback ready. That’s the best thing you can do for a new starter at quarterback, just give him a chance to catch his breath a little bit. I think Ohio State would be the fifth one, but for the other four, just look at Jimbo Fisher’s schedule. He’s got all of them.”

Why he thinks LSU is a Top 5 team: “Ed Orgeron has made me wrong. I thought, honestly, LSU hired a mascot. They went and got the biggest poster boy for the LSU fan base that they could. And (former athletic director) Joe Alleva, for the second straight November, had really missed an opportunity to change the course of that program. I knew what was going to happen with Ed Orgeron — he was going to get fired last December. Instead they’re winning double-digits and going to what we used to call one of those BCS bowls, the New Year’s Six bowls. The recruiting was always going to be there. Dave Aranda, I think he’s the best defensive coordinator in America. And this is what puts him over the top. A ton of guys do a great job, but the thing about Dave Aranda is, I don’t think he’s going to have programs trying to poach him away. Like the Cincinnati Bengals playing footsie with (Florida’s Todd) Grantham last year, like you had Will Muschamp after one year get hired (as a head coach). That’s not going to happen with Dave Aranda. If you know him, if you’ve been around him, he’s got that whole laid-back, ‘California cool’ sort of vibe to him, and that’s just not the profile that Stanford comes and hires you, or UCLA comes and hires you, or whomever. He’s going to be the defensive coordinator there making his $2 million a year, as long as he wants.”

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