Observations: What we saw and heard at the 10th practice of Auburn fall camp
Several first-choice units are coming into focus, while competition rages on some at important positions on the depth chart.
QB Payton Thorne (Austin Perryman/Auburn Athletics)
Fall camp, technically speaking, is coming to an end Tuesday evening.
Auburn University starts classes Wednesday, which means the days of strictly focusing on football are now behind the Tigers — who open the season with UMass inside Jordan-Hare Stadium in two-and-a-half weeks.
This week will be a crucial time for a lot of those players fighting for roles, as the transition to an extended game week usually happens after the second scrimmage of the fall.
There will still be time for movement on a depth chart that won’t be finalized until game week, but several of Auburn’s assistant coaches have noted how important this stretch is for figuring out who will be the key pieces of the puzzle.
Auburn has already switched its practice schedule to the late afternoons, and media members were given a regular viewing window Tuesday to go along with interviews with all four of the Tigers’ offensive assistants not named Philip Montgomery.
Here’s what we saw and heard on this unofficial last day of summer on the Plains.
QB Robby Ashford (Austin Perryman/Auburn Athletics)
Payton Thorne and Robby Ashford run with the 1s
As usual, the viewing window Tuesday evening featured a look at the offense running through a series of plays against air.
The Tigers rolled through four different units, with the order at quarterback being Payton Thorne, Robby Ashford and Holden Geriner before Thorne went back into the drill next to Sean Jackson and behind the first-choice offensive line.
(The running back rotation went, in order: Jarquez Hunter, Damari Alston, Brian Battie and Jeremiah Cobb. Notably, Alston and Battie received first-team reps at other times during the viewing window.)
Toward the end of the window, Auburn split into two different groups on both offense and defense and worked on blitz pickups. The defense sent a wide variety of players at the quarterbacks, challenging the offense to have the right people in to protect.
During that drill, Ashford went first, followed by Thorne. Geriner spent the drill on the other half of the field, working behind the second-team offensive line and against the second-team defense.
Freeze said last Saturday after the scrimmage that he thought he knew where to go next with the quarterbacks — as he wanted to have the battle narrowed down to two after the first 10 days of practice. The scrimmage changed that, with Freeze saying he needed to watch the film before moving forward.
Of course, we won’t know from just a viewing window whether Freeze and his staff have actually narrowed down to two quarterbacks yet. If he has, Thorne and Ashford were the ones who got work with the first-team offense during this viewing window.
Things could change throughout practice, and Geriner — who has been impressive throughout fall camp — could get first-team work later. But that’s the updated situation at quarterback as the Tigers close in on a second scrimmage this Saturday.
WR Shane Hooks (Austin Perryman/Auburn Athletics)