Hugh Freeze brushes back on Payton Thorne explanation of botched fourth down play

There’s been quite a bit of back and forth over Auburn‘s failed fourth-and-1 attempt to open the fourth quarter against Georgia, with coach Hugh Freeze and quarterback Payton Thorne seemingly at odds.

Freeze claimed after the game that Thorne “didn’t go with what we had called.” Thorne later disputed that he changed the call at the line of scrimmage, which some contended after he went up to the line and said something.

In any case, the play failed when Payton Thorne tried to pull a read play off to the right side. A block was missed and he went down for a four-yard loss.

Georgia would take possession and quickly score a touchdown, putting the game out of reach at 28-10.

On Wednesday on an SEC teleconference call, Freeze once again chimed in after hearing Payton Thorne explain the situation on The Next Round program a day earlier.

“That’s a whole long story for sure, but the execution of it wasn’t proper,” Freeze said. “Payton is, he really thought he needed to handle an edge guy and he kept the same run on, so he’s correct. He did not change the play. But that play’s not designed to hit from the backside at all. So he was thinking through things, and I understand his thinking, but we can’t do that in that situation.”

The frustrating part for many Auburn fans was that the play came on the other end of a quarter break, meaning there was plenty of time to sort things through.

Instead, a coach and a quarterback once again appeared to be on different pages. It’s been the story of Auburn’s season so far.

Payton Thorne seemed defensive on The Next Round..

“Yeah, I think it was a fourth-down play that was being looked at,” Thorne explained on Tuesday. “I won’t get in too much into it. I could explain what happened, but I don’t think that would help our team. So I’ll keep that one in house.

“But I will say I did not check any play. It was something that we talked about on the sideline that I said what I saw and what it was, and then obviously you know our coaches saw after the game when they watched the film too what I was saying. So we’ve handled it. But now it’s just moving forward and doing what we can to execute out there and to give ourselves the best chance to win the rest of the season.”

Payton Thorne and Auburn will get a much-needed bye week this week at 2-4 overall, looking to turn things around in the second half of the season.

Up after that will be a road trip to No. 21 Missouri, the second of three straight road trips in the middle of the schedule.