Who's calling plays at Auburn? It depends, what down is it?

As an outsider, my memory of Gus Malzahn's final years at Auburn was him in a game of tug-of-war with the play sheet. Malzahn's play-calling is what took him from Hughes High School to the SEC, so why wouldn't he call plays? It was his offense, after all, and it's unlikely there would be a better play-caller on staff than him. Dance with who brung ya, as Darrell Royal would say. On the other hand, Malzahn wasn't the offensive coordinator, he was the head coach. If he wasn't focused on big picture decisions pressing Auburn football, whether that was in the middle of a Wednesday afternoon or on 4th-and-3, who was?

There are different examples of head coaches utilizing both models to success, but Malzahn seemingly changed his mind by the year toward the end of his 8-year tenure on the Plains.

Fast forward five seasons later, and another similar situation has arisen at Auburn. Take a look at this.

"It depends on how the game is going," Nix goes on to say on how involved Freeze tends to be. "But he's highly involved. To me, he's an outstanding play caller, and I've learned everything from him."

Now, there are degrees and shades of gray at play here. Game-planning is almost always a collaborative effort among coaching staffs. Rare is the offensive coordinator who locks himself in his office on a Sunday, then emerges days later with the game plan and the call sheet scribbled on to stone tablets like he's Moses on Mount Sinai. 

But at the same time, typically all the weeklong teamwork funnels into a single call-sheet, which on Saturday comes out of one man's mouth. What's the saying, if you have two quarterbacks, you don't have one? What about three play-callers? 

To me, the biggest issue seems to be an overall lack of trust. Are Nix and Austin going to call the plays they believe are best suited for a given situation, or are they going to call the ones they think Freeze wants them to call? If Freeze is the best coach on staff to call the plays, why doesn't he just call them? If he's not, why is his hand hovering over the joystick? If Freeze is the primary play-caller, why is Nix saying that Freeze has the authority to overrule anything they say? What is there to say if Freeze is calling plays?