Auburn will be without starting quarterback Bo Nix for the remainder of the 2021-2022 season. Nix suffered a broken ankle in the Tigers’ game against Mississippi State and had successful surgery on his ankle Monday.
Going forward, Auburn head football coach Bryan Harsin said T.J. Finley, the sophomore transfer quarterback from LSU, will be the team’s starter.
Finley will be Auburn’s signal-caller for the team’s next two regular-season games and the team’s bowl game barring any unforeseen circumstance. Fans throughout the season had been calling for the transfer to get increased game reps, or potentially even overtake Nix as the regular starter.
Now it is Finley’s time to shine.
"He prepares like a starter,” Harsin said. “Now it is his opportunity to go out there and play an entire game."
In his one season at LSU, Finley started five games, winning two. He threw for 941 yards and five touchdowns. Finley was LSU’s starting quarterback last year when Auburn beat the visiting Tigers by the largest margin in the two team’s history, 48-11.
This season, Finley has only played in relief roles at the beginning of the season and had his signature Auburn moment against Georgia State, where he threw Auburn’s game-winning touchdown pass on fourth down in the fourth quarter.
Finley has 275 yards passing and two scores this year, but his time in at quarterback against Mississippi State was the first since he played a single drive against LSU, one that Harsin said he had earned that week of practice.
Harsin also noted that due to Finley’s nature as a drop-back passer, that the play sheet remains the same no matter who is at quarterback, adding that Finley has “wheels” of his own.
"T.J. has seen it, he's done it,” Harsin said Monday. “He will get all the starting reps this week. At the end of the day, we are going to go out and execute our system."
As for who will now be the backup for Finley, Harsin said that senior quarterback Grant Loy will be the second-stringer.
Loy has yet to play any significant time at all at Auburn in his second year on the Plains. Loy transferred to Auburn in 2019, after previously starting as quarterback for Bowling Green.
Loy passed for over 1,100 yards in 2019 for Bowling Green and is Auburn’s oldest quarterback on the roster.
Harsin said he chose Loy as the backup over Trey Lindsey or Demetrius Davis due to Loy’s experience as a D-1 quarterback and the time he has spent in Auburn’s system. While Loy may not have any stats to speak of at Auburn, he is experienced and Harsin noted that his experience has not gone unnoticed.
The third-string and fourth-string quarterback spots will now belong to walk-on Trey Lindsey and Dematrius Davis respectively.
Lindsey walked on to Auburn’s squad in 2019 and has served as a reserve since then. As for why Lindsey gets the nod over Davis, Harsin again pointed to experience in Auburn’s system.
So where does that leave Davis, the freshman phenom from Texas?
Well, that is yet to be established. When asked if Davis will get any backup or even first-team reps moving forward, Harsin said he and the coaching staff have “not had those conversations.”
Davis was one of Auburn’s highest-rated recruits a year ago, as a four-star dual-threat quarterback. In his senior year of high school, he threw for over 3,500 yards and had 60 total scores.
According to Rivals.com and 247 Sports, he was a top-12 player at the quarterback position. Now, it appears he will stay stashed on Auburn’s depth chart.
As for why, Harsin was mum. Davis is not a large quarterback, only standing in at around 5-foot-10 and is just a freshman, having enrolled at Auburn in January. His lack of experience and size behind a shaky offensive line may not be a plan for success for Davis at this moment.
But for Finley, the 6-foot-7 Louisiana-born signal-caller, his time is now.
One of Finley’s two wins at LSU was against South Carolina, Auburn’s next opponent. LSU put up 52 points in that game, and Finley threw for 265 yards on 17 completions with two passing scores.
Auburn and Finley will face off against the Gamecocks in Columbia at 6 p.m. CT on Nov. 20. Auburn, even without Nix, is a one-score favorite against South Carolina.
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Henry Zimmer is from Jacksonville, Florida, and is currently in his fifth year with The Plainsman. He is currently the Sports Reporter and can be followed on Twitter here: @henryzimmer
