Payton Thorne called out for revealing too much about Auburn football's in-house turmoil

Crain & Company's Jake Crain called out Payton Thorne for going back on his word. Thorne said he wouldn't get too involved with Auburn football's internal affairs but then, as Crain pointed out, he did get into it on The Next Round Live.

"'“I’m not going to get too much into it because we need to keep that in house,'" Crain quoted of Thorne before pointing out, "Then proceeds to get into it."

Thorne revealed on The Next Round that he did not check any play and ran what was called by head coach Hugh Freeze and offensive coordinator Derrick Nix on a pivotal fourth-and-one play against Georgia down 21-10.

“I won’t get too much into it," Thorne prefaced before saying, "I could explain what happened but I don’t think that would help their team so I’ll keep that one in-house.

"I will say I did not check any play..."

Hugh Freeze threw Payton Thorne under the bus for ignoring his play-call

Freeze has a much different point of view of what happened on that pivotal fourth-down play in Athens.

According to Freeze, Thorne simply didn't execute what was asked of him and took matters into his own hands.

“Yeah, he absolutely didn’t go with what we had called,” Freeze said (h/t AL.com). “Payton’s a thinker. He knows football. He decided to try to run some type of zone read there. I think everybody was a little confused. But we definitely weren’t on the same page there. I should have used one of our timeouts there, when I saw things were going awry.”

It's hard to know if one should feel bad for Thorne for being Freeze's scapegoat or if he is reaping what he sowed for going rogue and ruining Auburn's chances of being competitive in 2024's Deep South's Oldest Rivalry game.

Either way, his final season on the Plains will go down as one of the more polarizing a player has ever had.