Auburn football: CBS thinks this player would excel on the hardwood

Though we’re in the most crucial part of the basketball season, the Auburn football team is still busy working out and practicing ahead of the annual A-Day game. With the NCAA March Madness tournament currently underway, most sports fans’ minds are currently split between basketball and football due to the upcoming NFL Draft.

The CBS staffers are no different, and recently they released an article choosing college football players that would hypothetically shine on the court. The staffers named five players they could see dominating in the basketball world, and an Auburn athlete made the cut. Rising sophomore J.J. Pegues was chosen by Barrett Sallee, and here’s the explanation:

"Look, it’s easy to pick the tall wide receiver who can jump out of the gym. But let’s be real, hoops games are won on the glass with the big men. Auburn tight end J.J. Pegues is the perfect man to fill that role. The 6-foot-3, 308-pounder with feet like a ballet dancer would be able to box out, crash to boards and back down any under-sized defender thrown his way.Pegues showed as a true freshman that he is light on his feet and can leap defenders who dive at his legs. Is there anything to suggest that he wouldn’t be able to put up 20 and 10 on a regular basis? Nope."

Sallee is not wrong, of course. Let’s remember back to the Tigers’ matchup with the Arkansas Razorbacks when the tight end lined up as a wildcat quarterback and picked up a swift first down. By the end of the shortened 2020 season, the true freshman recorded five rushing attempts for 14 yards and caught seven passes for 57 yards.

His pass completion percentage? 100 percent. He has only one pass attempt in his stat book, but it was a completion, and if you were going to find something in football to juxtapose with a shooting average, launching the ball and having it land where it should seem like the only comparable stat.

All this to say, we’re pretty happy with Pegues’ position in Jordan-Hare…but if there was one Auburn football player that we could see succeeding over in the Auburn Arena, J.J. would be the guy.