Auburn football: Tigers can’t afford to look past Southern Miss

Former JUCO transfer and rising senior Jack Abraham should once again be the starter for Southern Miss in 2020. The 6-foot, 204-pound quarterback threw for 3,496 yards, 19 touchdowns and 15 interceptions last year while also adding 77 yards and six touchdowns on the ground.

While Abraham certainly needs to work on cutting down those interceptions, one thing he does do extremely well is throw the ball with accuracy. Abraham completed 223 of his 305  passes as a redshirt sophomore in 2018. That 73.1 completion percentage led the country among starting quarterbacks. Last year, that number dipped to 67.9 but that was also on 100 more passing attempts.

Behind Abraham, junior Tate Whatley is an intriguing dual-threat option who appeared in three games last season but shouldn’t see much, if any playing time against Auburn unless Abraham goes down with an injury.

Still, Southern Miss had the best passing offense in the C-USA last year in terms of yardage (289.5 per game.) Against an inexperienced Auburn secondary, that could mean trouble.

Abraham tossed the ball 44 times against the Tigers in their last matchup and we will probably see something similar in 2020.