Before last weekend, the Auburn football program was teetering on the edge. Though everyone knows the Tigers are in a rebuilding year, losing four SEC games in a row is enough to test anyone’s patience, from coaches to players to fans.
It was very clear that things were not working. The Tigers had yet to find any sort of identity on the offense, and were still swapping out quarterbacks Payton Thorne and Robby Ashford seemingly at random. It felt like two steps forward, one step back every time the Auburn football team hit the field.
Finally, ahead of this past weekend’s matchup with Mississippi State, head coach Hugh Freeze decided it was time to lay down the law and make a decision for the greater good of the team—no matter what any of his assistant coaches thought, according to Auburn Rivals:
"“There wasn’t really a conversation,” Freeze explained. “It was just ‘This is what we’re doing,’ and that’s it. This is what we’re doing, and we’ll figure out which one can either do it or not, and if none of them can, we’ll just cross that bridge when we get there. And I think Payton (Thorne) loved it.“And again, I thought Robby (Ashford) showed some good things in practice, too, but Payton … took the initiative and was playing well enough. And that discussion wasn’t ugly, but you get to a point where the only thing that I know, is got to be what I’m comfortable with, and this is what I think we need to do.”"
After the game, Thorne noted that staying on the field for more time than usual allowed him to build a stronger rhythm and really work on the tempo that Freeze wants on the offense. Playing 66 of 68 snaps in the matchup, Thorne had his best game yet with three touchdowns through the air and 20 of 26 pass completions for 230 yards.
Freeze went on to say that aside from a few mistakes, Thorne’s play was extremely solid, and it showed how confident the quarterback was in the game plan. Clearly, constantly rotating quarterbacks is not the best move, and hopefully now it’s something that is in the Tigers’ rearview mirror.