Fly War Eagle
Fansided

Auburn projected to be sneaky dangerous with Grayson McCall

By Andrew Hughes

Auburn football was projected to be a sneaky dangerous team in the SEC if they were able to land Coastal Carolina transfer Grayson McCall Mandatory Credit: Matt Pendleton-USA TODAY Sports
Auburn football was projected to be a sneaky dangerous team in the SEC if they were able to land Coastal Carolina transfer Grayson McCall Mandatory Credit: Matt Pendleton-USA TODAY Sports /
facebooktwitterreddit

FanSided’s Cody Williams has high hopes for an Auburn football program featuring Coastal Carolina quarterback transfer Grayson McCall — calling them a potentially “sneaky dangerous” in the SEC.

“When you look at McCall’s best years from 2020-22 under Jamey Chadwell, he operated in a manner very similarly to what we’ve seen Freeze have a lot of success with at QB in his offenses,” Williams prefaced before saying, “He can throw the ball extremely well, but his mobility on and outside of designed runs really opens things up further. If Auburn can keep adding more talent and land McCall, they could be sneaky dangerous in the SEC next season.”

McCall is a far superior passer to Payton Thorne and Robby Ashford and has similar burst scrambling out of the pocket while being a superior reader of defenses than either 2023 starting option. It’s not a stretch to say swapping in McCall raises AU’s ceiling ten-fold in 2024.

Analyst takes shot at incumbent Auburn football starting quarterback

Saving all the praise for McCall, Williams took quite the shot at Thorne. The FanSided writer called Thorne a “stopgap” option and even claimed that most saw No. 1 as such when he committed to the Tigers in May.

“We don’t need to rehash the obvious narrative that Hugh Freeze and the Auburn Tigers need a quarterback for the 2024 season,” Williams prefaced before saying, “They landed Payton Thorne late in the process last offseason, but everyone even in the moment believed that was a stopgap option that could easily be upgraded over in the coming years.”

Thorne had one of the roughest QB stretches in the country from Week 4 to Week 8, but he proved by season’s end that he was QB1 material in the SEC.

AU may just elevate the standards for their starting signal-caller in 2024 higher than where Thorne is currently.

Home/Auburn Football