Fired up Bryan Harsin, Auburn face quarterback controversy

Like it or not, Auburn football coach Bryan Harsin has a quarterback controversy on his hands. The coach knew that when he replaced Bo Nix with TJ Finley late in the third quarter against Georgia State on Saturday.

It wasn’t perfect. Finley’s first three drives were unfruitful and the Tigers lost a fumble on one. But finally, the LSU transfer led a 98-yard touchdown drive and threw the go-ahead score to Shedrick Jackson. He also succeeded on the 2-point conversion to but Auburn up 27-24 with 45 seconds left.

He saved them from an embarrassing upset, and Harsin said he simply felt it’s what he had do do under the circumstances.

“I don’t have a gameplan like that,” Harsin said. “That’s not how it works. I don’t have a gameplan like that, and I don’t have to tell anyone what the gameplan is. Alright. I played it (quarterback). I coached it. Those guys, the quarterback position, you get yourself ready like everybody else. Bottom line…. I know everybody want to make a big thing out of that. That becomes the storyline. The storyline is ‘get better.’”

Nix struggled in the first half and that trend continued early in the third quarter. Prior to being benched, he had thrown for 156 yards on a completion rate of less than 50%.

A former 5-star recruit, Nix won SEC Freshman of the Year in 2019. He was the first true freshman to start for the Tigers since 1946. But a lack of consistency has thrown doubt onto his ability to lead the team.

With Finley entering to win the game, that doubt is now amplified.

“That was my decision,” Harsin said. “That was something that — I tell our quarterbacks all the time, control what you can control. I’ve coached that position for a long time I played that position, and you can only control what you’re doing on the field. And guys around you have to make plays. That’s the one thing about the quarterback position. You get way too much credit and way too much blame. And I made the decision to make a change and to see if we could just create some momentum, and we did. And it worked in our favor.

“Bo has worked very hard and practices hard and does all the things we ask him to do. We just didn’t have really a lot of things happening for us that were going our way in this game, and sometimes on offense, that’s how it goes.”

Nix has still not thrown an interception all season and has 724 yards and five touchdowns. He hasn’t been ruled out yet as the starter for Week 5 against LSU, Finley’s former team. But it’s clear he has much to prove if he wants to prove to Bryan Harsin if he wants to end the Auburn quarterback controversy.

“He wants to be out there,” Harsin said. “…That’s why I said I made the decision. So yeah, he’s probably pissed, which every competitor would be. You want to be out there on the field, but that’s not what he could control in that situation. I control that. And so, he supported his teammates; that’s what he can control…. If there’s a guy on this team that I pull out, and he’s not pissed about it, I’m going to be worried. That’s how — you’re a competitor; you’re here to play. Coaches make decisions, and all you can do as a player is control what you can control. That’s how it always is, in my opinion.”