This is the beginning of an Auburn football 2024 season preview series that we’re calling “State of the Position.” It’s a breakdown of the past, present and future of each group on the Tigers’ roster as they look to end their streak of losing seasons and take a significant step forward this fall.
The goal is to run a pair of these each week. They’ll most likely be on Wednesday and Thursday mornings, but they could be moved around in case of any schedule conflicts. Today, we’ll start with the all-important quarterback position. Tomorrow, we’ll naturally follow with the wide receivers.
In 2023, for the second consecutive season, no team in the SEC had fewer passing yards than Auburn. The Tigers have now finished last in the conference in air yardage four times in the last 12 years — 2012, 2016, 2022 and 2023. In that same time span, they’ve finished in the top half of the league just three times.
Throughout its history, Auburn has been able to build worthy contenders without a high-octane passing game. This program is, at its core, a “run-the-ball-and-play-defense” type of place.
But, the deeper we get into the pass-dominant era of modern football, the less likely it is that a team can truly compete for a championship without that air attack. Over the last five years, 18 of the 20 College Football Playoff teams ranked in the top 25 nationally in passing yards per attempt. Meanwhile, Auburn finished 97th, 88th, 94th, 96th and 95th in that category.
One of the main reasons why Auburn hired Hugh Freeze was his experience with the type of explosive offenses that have become more prevalent at the top of the sport. His Ole Miss teams were routinely in the top third of the country in passing efficiency, climbing as high as No. 12 in a 10-win 2015 campaign. Three of his four Liberty teams were inside the top 25 for that statistic.
But Freeze’s first season at Auburn wasn’t a successful one through the air, to say the least. The team improved its touchdown-to-interception ratio, quarterback rating and completion percentage — but the total yardage actually decreased as the yards per attempt stayed the same.
The main difference, it turned out, was that Auburn got to play a few more FBS teams that didn’t finish with a winning record in 2023 (five) than it did in 2022 (two). In those games in 2023, the Tigers completed 62.9% of their passes for an average of 7.9 yards per attempt and a touchdown-to-interception ratio of nearly 3-to-1. Auburn won all of those games, along with a rout of FCS team Samford that featured 340 passing yards.
The schedule, however, featured seven FBS teams that finished with winning records. In those games, Auburn completed only 53.9% of its passes for an average of 5.4 yards per attempt and more interceptions (seven) than touchdowns (five). The Tigers lost all seven of those games, and they were beaten in the passing yards per attempt category in all of them.
The vast majority of the passes in 2023 came from the right arm of Payton Thorne, who joined Auburn after spring practices. Thorne had a breakout 2021 campaign with a Michigan State team that won 11 games, but his production wasn’t nearly as strong in 2022. Thorne elected to leave East Lansing after spring ball, as his status as the starting quarterback for 2023 wasn’t completely set in stone.
Thorne beat out Robby Ashford for the starting job, as T.J. Finley elected to transfer in the summer. Ashford was still used as a run-first option in certain packages, but the role was clearly Thorne’s from the start of the season. (Ashford transferred to South Carolina.) Thorne turned out to be a strong rushing threat in an RPO-heavy scheme, racking up 682 true rushing yards on 71 carries — an average of 6.2 per carry.
Still, Auburn’s inability to throw the ball efficiently or explosively against quality competition limited what it was able to do in Year 1 of a new era. Thorne strung together some solid, if unspectacular, passing lines in a three-game winning streak over SEC strugglers Mississippi State, Arkansas and Vanderbilt. (Even the disastrous loss to New Mexico State had OK numbers.) But, in losses to Alabama and Maryland to end the season, he went 18-43 (41.9%) for 175 yards.
When it came to Thorne’s perceived job security, December 2023 was a roller coaster. Auburn was rumored to be linked to a few transfer quarterback options, namely Duke star and Alabama native Riley Leonard. But, when Kansas State’s Will Howard decided to go to Ohio State, Notre Dame landed Leonard as its next top choice.
During bowl practices, Freeze said he wanted to stick with Thorne and get the advantages of having a second-year transfer quarterback in 2024. Then the ugly loss to Maryland happened, with Thorne getting benched late in the game and Freeze telling reporters that the job was “wide-open.” Auburn was once again reportedly linked to multiple options in the portal, but nothing substantial came from them.
That meant Auburn would roll into 2024 with mostly the same quarterback room as it had in a tough 2023 for the passing attack — with the notable exception of Ashford’s transfer and Freeze’s first big-name quarterback signing, high 4-star Walker White.
But all signs still pointed toward Thorne retaining the starting job for one more season.
