Fall camp has wrapped up and Auburn head coach Gus Malzahn still is yet to tab a starter for the Tigers’ season opener against Clemson, which is now just a few weeks away.
Its been between the same three guys since early in the spring: senior Jeremy Johnson, who entered the 2015 season with heaps of unfounded expectations, and ultimately succumbed to the pressure early on; redshirt sophomore Sean White, who took over for an ineffective Johnson and performed adequately before suffering a knee injury, throwing the quarterback position back into uncertainty; and junior college transfer John Franklin III, the star of the Netflix series “Last Chance U”, and former Florida State Seminole.
Johnson won the job last year immediately following A-Day; he was pegged as a prototypical NFL-style quarterback — a towering frame with a rocket for an arm and a decent set of wheels to boot. He had dazzled in spot duty behind Nick Marshall in 2013 and 2014, most notably against Arkansas in 2014, where Johnson started the season opener for a suspended Marshall. Johnson rolled through the Razorbacks in one half of action to the tune of 243 yards and a pair of touchdowns on 12-of-16 passing. But prior to the 2015 season, he was popping up all over preseason award watch lists; most notably, Johnson’s odds for the Heisman climbed as high as 12/1. For reference, Alabama’s Derrick Henry, who ended up winning the award, was slotted at 25/1.
And how it ended up is well-known to everyone. Johnson threw six interceptions in his first three games and got benched for Sean White, who managed the next few games well. An injury to White’s knee forced Johnson to take the snaps against Texas A&M — and Auburn won. A mishmash of the two QBs followed for the rest of the season, culminating in a dominant win over Memphis in the Birmingham Bowl. But entering this year, it was clear that Malzahn’s pro-style experiment didn’t pan out the way it did while he was the offensive coordinator at Tulsa. The success he found in the first two years at Auburn resulted from a quarterback who was decidedly a dual-threat signal caller.
Franklin can do that, but he’s yet to separate himself from the others. At Florida State, he “was” Marshall on the Seminoles’ scout team offense leading up to the 2014 BCS National Championship. Franklin’s speed is top-flight, but his passing needs work. At East Mississippi Community College, he threw for 733 yards and seven scores while completing just 58.2 percent of his passes. On the ground, however, he picked up 451 yards and nine touchdowns, good for the fourth-most on the team.
Malzahn has named a quarterback in roughly mid-to-late August every year he’s been in charge of the Auburn offense outside of two years: last year with Johnson and 2010 with Cam Newton, both of whom were given the nod after A-Day.
It’s telling that he can’t decide yet. If any one quarterback had proven themselves the easy choice to start, it would’ve happened by now.
"I'm not ready to name a starter right now," Malzahn said Monday, according to Brandon Marcello of AuburnUndercover. "Possibly in the near future that could happen but we're not ready right now as of the end of fall camp. That's not a bad thing at all. As a matter of fact, it's a real positive thing that we've got a fierce competition going on. Our guys are battling. They're much improved from the spring, and that's exciting for me."
It could happen soon, but if there’s improvement to be had in 2016, Malzahn and co. will need to make sure they’ve got the right man. And with Clemson coming to town first, the incorrect choice could spell instant disaster against Deshaun Watson, who will have his sights set on a championship after falling just short against Alabama.
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