Hugh Freeze evaluates Payton Thorne, state of Auburn QB room coming out of bye week

The quarterback position has been a point of concern throughout the season for the Auburn Tigers. With that, head coach Hugh Freeze evaluated starter Payton Thorne and the state of the entire quarterback room coming out of the bye week.

Freeze praised the play of Thorne, even though he wasn’t able to practice during the bye week with a shoulder issue. However, he did also leave who would start the final three games of the season open-ended.

“Payton has played solid,” Hugh Freeze said. “Now, he was not able to practice last week with the shoulder and we’ll see how this week goes with that and we’ll see how this week goes with that and with others getting the reps and kind of go from there. But when I say that, it’s certainly not an indication that I don’t think he has played pretty solid here as of late.”

Payton Thorne is now in his second season at Auburn and his sixth overall season of college football. He has completed 62.9 percent of his passes this season for 1,825 yards and 13 touchdowns with seven interceptions. He has also previously been benched for backup Hank Brown this season.

“But you start kind of thinking big-picture, and that’s not always the easiest thing to do because you love your players and you want what’s best for all of them, what gives us the best chance to win the remaining three games,” Freeze said. “And, obviously, we’ll start seeing how the health is, first and foremost.”

Hugh Freeze was able to give the backup quarterbacks more reps during the bye week with Payton Thorne out. That’s something that is invaluable and should help the Tigers moving forward.

“The second open week we actually got the other guys quite a bit of reps in the three practices we had,” Freeze said. “Then we had a little scrimmage to close it out. Offense versus defense, other guys that don’t typically get reps, and offense won that scrimmage on a pass play from Walker [White] to one of the young receivers. It was good to see them get reps. We got Holden [Geriner] and Hank quite a few also.”

From here, Auburn has three games remaining. That starts with a home game against ULM. Then, the Tigers will finish with a pair of ranked opponents, Texas A&M and Alabama. At 3-6 so far this season, the Tigers will need to win out if they want to make it to a bowl game this season.