Hugh Freeze evaluates QBs, talks added motivation from Cal comment
Hugh Freeze led Auburn to another win Saturday against Cal, continuing with his 2-quarterback system.
Freeze leaned mostly on Payton Thorne, but also went to Robby Ashford for one drive. While it has worked well so far, Freeze isn’t committed to using 2 quarterbacks.
“I don’t know if that’s exactly what I want it to look like, but we just had no juice, no momentum and so you’re kind of searching for it,” Freeze said in a press conference Monday. “We’ve got to figure that piece of it out.”
While he saw some decent looks from Thorne, who had 94 yards, 2 touchdowns and an interception, he wants more consistency out of him.
“We need Payton to play better, truthfully,” Freeze said. “That last drive, he played well. Prior to that I think a few of the throws were inaccurate. I thought he left the pocket early once. I’m not beating Payton up, he played really well that last possession, but we do need more consistency throughout the whole game.”
Freeze liked what he saw from Ashford, but ultimately saw Thorne as the better fit for most of the game.
“Robby’s got to get his touches,” Freeze said. “We had a really good package for him and had a good drive going in that package, and then one of our running backs went the wrong way and created a negative play and got us behind the chains.”
There was some extra motivation for Auburn on Saturday after Cal running back Jadyn Ott said that “name isn’t everything,” and Freeze said that the comment did add some extra juice.
Hugh Freeze on this quote being bulletin board material: "Honestly, we don't really use that a lot. We heard our kids talking about it, and I don't think that hurt." But Freeze did say he mentioned it in his pregame speech. https://t.co/cHU78SXzhh
— Nathan King (@NathanKing247) September 11, 2023