Aubserver Mailbag 167: How is Payton Thorne in the RPO game?

This week: Freshman wide receivers, NFL Draft takes, transfers, basketball recruiting, talent levels and your favorite American cities

QB Payton Thorne (Austin Perryman/Auburn Tigers)

Welcome back to the Aubserver Mailbag. After writing a long introduction last week, I’m going to keep this one short and sweet — because we have a lot to get to between Auburn football and men’s basketball questions.

After going with the offseason topic of snow cone flavors, I asked people on Twitter to send in their questions with their picks for their favorite American cities that they’ve visited. There was a clear-cut winner among the Inner Circle, but we got several other excellent picks.

Thanks as always for reading, listening and subscribing to The Observer. This is the time of year where we have to get a little more creative with the newsletters and the podcasts, but y’all continue to make it a lot of fun with the questions and the interaction.

Let’s go.

Do you think Thorne has the decision-making skills to handle what will presumably be an increased RPO volume this year? I’m skeptical.

I feel like Atlanta is cheating since I’ve been there so many times, so I’ll go with New York.

golf school

Since he arrived at Auburn, Hugh Freeze has talked a lot about run-pass options (RPOs) and how important they are to his preferred style of offense. Here’s some of what he said about it this spring, when asked about what the Tigers might look like on that side of the ball this year compared to last year:

“You gotta be able to do both (run and pass) and stay balanced. And I do think that if we can be consistent in our RPO game that it really opens up us to be more effective in the passing game — because you're not always having to dropback protect, which I just don't think that's a great recipe in this league. If you're having to call a bunch of dropback protections, usually that other side is a little more athletic and can figure out a way to outnumber you.”

So what does that mean for Payton Thorne, who is the current favorite to be Auburn’s starting quarterback in 2024? Let’s look at some numbers.

Pro Football Focus separates passing plays into play-action and non-play-action. Most of what we would consider RPOs — plays where an option to hand it off is attached — would be play-action.

In 2023, Thorne completed 60.9% of all of his passes for an average of 6.6 yards per attempt. PFF has him down for a 66.7% completion percentage on play-action passes with an average of 8.0 yards per attempt. The only SEC quarterback who had a bigger difference between his completion percentages on play-action and non-play-action passes was South Carolina’s Spencer Rattler.

SEC StatCat has specific data for RPOs. According to that site, Thorne completed 70.4% of his passes on RPOs for an average of 7.0 yards per attempt. His adjusted completion percentage — that is, when you take out things like drops and batted balls — was up to 82% on those throws, compared to 73.3% on all pass attempts.

The numbers seem to suggest that Thorne was better on RPOs than non-RPOs last season. But the still-low yards per attempt mark on RPOs shows that there’s plenty of room to grow in this department. Some of that could come down to improvement at the wide receiver position, specifically at winning 1-on-1 matchups and being able to stretch the field more vertically. Auburn put a big emphasis on that this offseason.

When it comes to pure decision-making, it’s difficult to imagine that Thorne would not have an advantage over the younger, less-experienced quarterbacks on Auburn’s roster. If excelling at RPOs for a quarterback is about reading, processing and reacting quickly, one would think that a sixth-year senior such as Thorne should be the best-equipped to do that. He’s seen a lot and played a lot as a quarterback at this level.

According to PFF, the top five SEC quarterbacks last season in yards per attempt on play-action passes — which would include most RPOs — were LSU’s Jayden Daniels, Ole Miss’ Jaxson Dart, Georgia’s Carson Beck, Missouri’s Brady Cook and Rattler. Daniels, Dart and Rattler were transfers in their second seasons as the starter. Beck was in his third season at a dynasty. Cook was also a second-year starter.

Past experience is no guarantee of future results, especially when the existing production hasn’t been up to par. Last season, Thorne did not have the season that Auburn needs in order to be a true competitor in the SEC, and the splits between winning and non-winning opponents speak for themselves.

But, if you’re an Auburn fan looking for reasons to be optimistic about the direction of the offense in 2024, Thorne was very clearly more comfortable at quarterback in spring ball after not going through those practices a season ago. He’s got more talent to work with at wide receiver, along with what could be an improved offensive line. The running backs and tight ends have already proven to be good pieces next to him. And the head coach is doing more things his way on offense compared to last year.

On top of that, Thorne’s numbers were better with RPOs and play-action passes than traditional dropbacks in 2023. This was also true in 2021, which was his big breakout season at Michigan State. Thorne has to be a better quarterback in 2024, but the context surrounding him has a real chance of being better as well.

We won’t know how much of this actually matters until the fall. But, based on what we’ve seen recently in college football, going with a second-year transfer quarterback as your starter while you build for the future in high-school recruiting makes sense on paper. Auburn just has to translate that into real, tangible results.

As for your city pick, I will always love Atlanta. I was born there, and I’ve spent a large amount of time there. I can make the drive up 85 — specifically to Truist Park — in my sleep. I love that I can get a high-caliber meal of any cuisine imaginable in Atlanta. And I believe the Atlanta airport is the best in the world.

But New York is too busy, too crowded and too large for my tastes. I think everybody should see the big NYC tourist locations at least once. After that, go visit other places.

New Orleans, and hmmm let’s go with, “how heavily will those incoming 5-star freshman receivers be used in the passing game Year 1?”

serge

Let me start with my take on New Orleans.