Auburn football is looking ahead to Carnell “Cadillac” Williams’ first game coached in Jordan-Hare Stadium, and it appears that the quarterback that defined Bryan Harsin’s legacy on the Plains is looking elsewhere to finish out his collegiate football career.
T.J. Finley, brought to the Plains to compete with Bo Nix in May 2021 — the first major transfer addition of the short-lived Harsin era — is likely to hit the portal soon, per On3’s Jeffrey Lee, after maintaining a redshirt in 2022 after having played in just four games and started against Mercer, San Jose State, and Penn State.
Harsin’s insistence on Finley in 2022 despite going winless in AU’s final three games of the 2021 season, two of which they were favored in, and allowing a three-way quarterback race to reach mid-September of this season will be the lasting memories of where things went wrong for the Boise Native’s tenure as Auburn’s head coach.
Finley is reportedly eyeing a move to Southeastern Louisiana following in the footsteps of fellow former Tigers quarterback Demetrius Davis (a Gus Malzahn recruit) to the FCS level of Division I college football. The Ponchatoula, Louisiana product would be joining his little brother Kody, a wide receiver. That sounds like a storybook ending for Finley’s career if Fly War Eagle has ever heard one.
The defining characteristic of the Cadillac era of Auburn football
It’s early, as in one game’s worth of evidence, but Auburn football seems to have made a full-on shift to the running game under Carnell “Cadillac” Williams. Against Mississippi State on November 5, the Tigers amassed 256 yards between Robby Ashford (108 rushing yards, two TDs), Tank Bigsby (89 rushing yards, one TD), and Jarquez Hunter (54 yards, 1 TD). Ashford had just 75 passing yards, and AU still held a lead at two different points of the fourth quarter this past Saturday.
It shouldn’t be a shock that a team with an offensive line incapable of giving any QB a long-lasting pocket to shift to heavily relying on calling the number of the signal-caller given Ashford’s athleticism and Cadillac’s presence as the lead play-caller.