The Auburn football team and an endless quarterback battle, a tale as old as time. Or at least it feels that way these days. All season long we’ve been watching head coach Hugh Freeze and the staff try to piece together a productive offense in realtime, and nothing seems to be working.
Since the very first game of the 2023 season, quarterbacks Payton Thorne and Robby Ashford have both played major roles on the offense. Even though Thorne was named QB1 ahead of the season, he has continued to rotate with Ashford, which hasn’t been easy.
Despite this being Thorne’s fourth season of college football, the quarterback situation is something that is brand new, according tothe Opelika-Auburn News:
"“I’ve never had to do that before,” Thorne said Tuesday. “It’s a new challenge for me. I’ve never really seen anybody else do that either, so I don’t know if there’s anybody I can ask to learn from. Every time I’m in there, I’m trying to do what I’m supposed to do and do what I’m being coached to do and execute and make a play when we need it.”"
Unfortunately, there has not been a lot of proper execution for the Tigers this season. After seven games this season, the Auburn football offense looks just about as clueless as they did back in August.
"“It’s extremely frustrating, to be honest,” Thorne said of the struggles. “It’s been tough. You’ve just got to keep showing up and keep working. I’m not going to be giving up this season or ever, but it’s been very frustrating.”"
Thorne went on to say that at the end of the day, both he and Ashford are just rooting for each other and trying to win football games for Auburn. Both quarterbacks have harped on “execution” but how much improvement can one expect when nothing changes?
This far in the season, would it not be better to pick one quarterback and let him attempt to try to find a rhythm instead of switching back and forth?