Mailbag 180: How much have in-season QB moves worked for Auburn?

This week: Scripted drives, air yards, recruiting, talent levels, conference realignment, Taylor Sheridan and breakfast foods

QB Hank Brown (Austin Perryman/Auburn Tigers)

This time last week, so many Auburn fans were excited about the Cal matchup and believed that things might be different for the Tigers in 2024.

Now, another home loss as a sizable favorite has those same fans questioning the future — and how drastic Auburn needs to be in trying to change that.

Since Payton Thorne threw his fourth and final pick of the Cal game last Saturday, the great debate has been about whether the Tigers should pull the trigger on Hank Brown at quarterback or try to ride it out with the veteran.

Our lead question this week in the mailbag is all about quarterback changes, and many of the rest talk about an offense that needs to be fixed in the aftermath of the Cal loss. I’m not going to tell you what opinions you should have as a fan, but I hope this mailbag arms you with more information moving forward. That’s always the goal.

We’ve got a lot to get to this week, and I wasn’t able to fit every single question in this mailbag. If you sent in a question that’s not in here, just wait. I’ll revisit them soon.

Let’s go.

How much precedent is there for Auburn switching starting QBs for reason other than injury midseason and seeing meaningful improvement? Finley to Ashford helped, but the switch to Caddy had a lot to do with that. Johnson to White worked. Are there others?

Jerry

Well, you’ve got to remember that Auburn moved to Robby Ashford from T.J. Finley in the 2022 season before the switch to Cadillac Williams. Finley suffered an injury during the Penn State game in Week 3 and only made one more brief appearance the rest of the season. Ashford was the starter for five games under Bryan Harsin before his firing.

Auburn, obviously, did a better job of taking advantage of Ashford’s skill set once Williams became the interim head coach. As our pal Justin Lee likes to note, Will Friend was drawing up plays in the dirt, and the Tigers still found a way to nearly beat Mississippi State and beat Texas A&M.

Jeremy Johnson to Sean White is the only example of benching a healthy quarterback in favor of another during my time on the beat. The offense was better in 2015 after the move, as Auburn got to lean on its ground game more and grind the season out. White didn’t turn the ball over as much as Johnson and had better efficiency metrics, even if he didn’t light it up with his overall numbers.

Before that? You’ve got to dig some.

Let’s go back to 2011, when Clint Moseley took over for Barrett Trotter. Moseley finished with better passing numbers than Trotter, and he had a great game against Ole Miss. But Moseley had to play three ranked teams down the stretch, and all were losses. To make matters worse, Moseley got hurt, and Trotter had to fill in for him in the bowl game before deciding to end his college career.

You’ve got to go all the way back to 2001 and 2002 for the other clear examples.

In 2001, redshirt freshman Jason Campbell won the starting job and played well the first couple of games, but things went south against Syracuse. A few weeks later, he was pulled for the veteran Daniel Cobb against Florida — and Auburn rallied to win. While Cobb wasn’t great down the stretch, he kept the starting job to open 2002.

Campbell got some opportunities early in the 2002 season, when Auburn got off to a slow start, but he took over for good against LSU. Auburn went 5-1 with Campbell as QB1, and he would remain the top dog for the next two seasons.

This is a different situation, but going from Campbell to Cobb back to Campbell showed the advantages of spinning toward youth — and how experience doesn’t always translate to results at quarterback. I will say that the shuffling between the two didn’t seem to work well for Auburn in 2001 and 2002, and things didn’t take off until one of the quarterbacks got to take full hold of the job. Growing pains might happen!

Auburn doesn’t have a ton of real experience with going back and forth with quarterbacks. (Anything that happened before 2000, others can speak on with more authority. I’m just going off of situations I can kinda remember and research thoroughly online.) I don’t think Johnson-to-White or Trotter-to-Moseley hurt Auburn that much, but you didn’t really see these grand results. Cobb-back-to-Campbell was the best decision of the bunch, by far.

So, here’s my take: If a quarterback wins a job in the preseason, it’s usually because he’s the best option to run the offense. If Auburn has to go in a different direction, it’s usually warranted, but it’s also not something that magically makes the offense miles better.

What does that mean for Auburn in 2024? The Tigers might decide that going with a younger, different option like Brown and working through any issues is preferable to sticking with Thorne, since this is his last year. Brown could come into the role and click right away, too. But it’s tough to bank on that, since we don’t have a whole lot to go off of with the young quarterbacks. Thorne kept the job all preseason for a reason.

If you’re in the “go with Brown” camp, I fully understand. Just don’t expect miracles.

Starting to see more of this narrative that Freeze is good with first drives and then bad at making adjustments on offense.

Can you ELI5 what a “scripted drive” is and why it’s so effective? If it works so well, why can’t you just script the whole game?

Trey