The similarities are there.

Robby Ashford has plenty in common with a young Malik Willis. That’s Willis, AKA the guy who left Auburn after he was a third-string quarterback, but joined forces with Hugh Freeze at Liberty and became one of the top quarterback prospects in the 2022 NFL Draft.

Now, there’s hope that Ashford can be the second coming of Willis. Well, let’s rephrase that a bit.

There’s hope that with the similarities Ashford and Willis share, Freeze can get the most out of the returning Auburn starter.

Spend any time watching both and you can see the strengths. Both are physically gifted runners within the script and off-script. As guys built like modern outside linebackers, they can extend drives with their legs and because they have strong arms, ideally, you can’t just load the box and assume the offense will be entirely 1-dimensional.

Of course, the knock on Willis in his early Liberty days is exactly the knock that Ashford currently has — accuracy. In his first season as an FBS starter, Ashford failed to complete 50% of his passes. He only had 2 games with 170 passing yards for an Auburn offense that struggled to protect the quarterback and lacked receiver depth.

At the same time, he also added 710 rushing yards, nearly half of which came in the final 4 games with Cadillac Williams as the head coach. In that stretch, Auburn averaged 28.5 points per game, which was a significant uptick from the 22.9 points that Auburn averaged under Bryan Harsin in the first 8 games.

The question isn’t whether Ashford has skills to make plays in the SEC. It’s whether he can improve his weaknesses enough to be Freeze’s starter and turn into a true dual-threat quarterback instead of just an elite runner who can occasionally flash potential with his arm. Part of that will be physical, and part of that will be mental.

When Willis went on an official visit to Liberty in 2019, he spent 3 days talking ball with Freeze. Instead of talking about life on campus, they drew up plays on the white board. Freeze wanted to test Willis’ understanding of his offensive philosophy. What does he see on this read? What happens if a defense comes out in this coverage? To Freeze’s delight, Willis was a quick learner.

“I kinda knew when he was on his official visit that I could really coach this kid,” Freeze told SDS about Willis back in 2020. “I think I can be hard on him, I think I can be demanding on him and he wants to please.”

That’s one of the things that Willis grew to appreciate with Freeze. There was more of an expectation that the offense would take what was being given instead of forcing the run scheme like he experienced in Gus Malzahn’s offense at Auburn.

Where Willis’ and Ashford’s situations differ is the urgency. Due to previous NCAA transfer rules, Willis had to sit out his first season at Liberty in 2019. His waiver for immediate eligibility was denied by the NCAA, so he ran scout team and learned the Freeze offense inside and out that year. By the time Willis took over and looked the part in that first month of the 2020 season, Freeze called his decision-making strides “monumental.” Instead of going back to the drawing board after a frustrating throwing day like Louisiana-Monroe in which Willis only completed 38% of his passes for 6.1 yards per attempt, Freeze was encouraged by an off-the-charts decision-making grade.

Unless Freeze lands a transfer quarterback — pursuits of Coastal Carolina quarterback Grayson McCall and former Oklahoma State quarterback Spencer Sanders fell through — the expectation is that the job will be Ashford’s to lose in 2023. He likely won’t get a redshirt year to master Freeze’s offense. But given Ashford’s career path, live reps are crucial at this stage of his development with 3 years of eligibility left (2020 didn’t count against anyone’s eligibility for the COVID year and 2021 was a redshirt year).

“Robby’s got the tools. Robby’s got the abilities,” SEC Network analyst and former Auburn center Cole Cubelic told SDS. “The thing that a lot of folks either don’t know or didn’t look at or didn’t pay attention to was how little football he played going into last spring … he hasn’t just been a quarterback in awhile. He missed a lot of time his senior year at Hoover (Ala.). He hasn’t just been healthy for an entire year to say, ‘OK, this is yours. Go out and get better. Take all of these reps.’

“There are parts of his game that Hugh sees and probably says, ‘If we can refine that, and we can get a little more consistent here and there, we can probably work with some of this.'”

That’s certainly worth remembering with Ashford. He didn’t play a snap in his first 2 years at Oregon, where he also played baseball. His 2022 spring at Auburn was his first time getting legitimate offseason quarterback reps.

It’s one of the reasons why Ashford looked like a guy who didn’t work through a ton of progressions. According to CFB Film Room, no Power 5 quarterback threw a higher percentage of their throws on the move than Ashford at 37.9%. Heisman Trophy winner and ESPN analyst Robert Griffin III called Ashford’s first career start against Mizzou and raved about his potential, but added a blunt assessment about where he was at in his development at the time.

“When I was a freshman, I was like Robby. I wasn’t a 1-read guy. I was a half-read guy. That’s what Robby is right now,” Griffin told SDS in October. “He drops back and it’s like he’s out of the pocket. That’s what I was, but I was a very dynamic runner. Robby’s a little bigger and stronger than I was when I came through as a freshman, but I was faster, so I got away with more. Watching him throw the football, he’s definitely got the potential if he can get the coach who can really develop him as a passer like I had with Art Briles and Philip Montgomery, then I think he can turn into something extremely special.”

Little did Griffin know in October that Montgomery would become Ashford’s next offensive coordinator. Prophetic? For sure.

But as for the other part of Griffin’s proclamation — Ashford becoming something extremely special — he’s still going to need help. Willis never really got the big, physical jump-ball receiver on the outside. CJ Daniels was the closest to that. He was instead surrounded by quicker targets who could make people miss after the catch.

A pivotal part of Ashford’s development is going to be finding the right targets, which remains a question for a team with just 2 receivers back who had 300 yards in 2022.

“Receiver is the position I’m concerned about,” Cubelic said. “A quarterback like Robby Ashford who’s looking to take the next step, who is going to make mistakes, and he’s going to be inaccurate at times, you would hope that he has a couple of guys who are erasers, guys who can make him right sometimes when he’s not. I just don’t know how many of those guys Auburn has right now … I’m surprised they haven’t attacked that position a little more in the portal.”

Cubelic continued.

“You can find those guys (in the portal) Look at Juice Wells. I think he’s the best receiver coming back in the SEC and (South Carolina) got him from James Madison,” Cubelic said. “Auburn’s gotta find a guy or 2 that can just go out and make you right a lot of the time. That would be a massive step in helping Robby become one of the quarterbacks in the top half of the SEC.”

That’s the hope for the Alabama native. His progression will have a major say in whether Auburn can bounce back in Year 1 under Freeze.

In Willis’ first season as a starter with Freeze at Liberty, who made the jump to FBS in 2018, he helped the program to a No. 17 ranking in the final AP Top 25. Willis became such a difference-maker under Freeze that Coastal Carolina coach Jamey Chadwell told SDS that his team would’ve beaten Liberty by 2 touchdowns in the Cure Bowl if not for the brilliance of the Flames’ quarterback.

Willis might not be a fair bar for Ashford to live up to, but it’s ironic that at this time last year, there was an assumption that he was also the third-string quarterback at Auburn. Of course, Ashford stayed at Auburn and became QB1. But perhaps like with Willis, it’ll be Freeze’s guidance that’ll play a key role in Ashford soaring past his perceived ceiling.

The similarities are there. Maybe soon, so too will be the Freeze bump.