Gus Malzahn says he was encouraged by Auburn’s ‘desperate’ QBs in first fall practice
By Andrew Olson
Published:
Auburn entered fall camp with Joey Gatewood and Bo Nix competing for the starting quarterback job. The Tigers opened fall camp on Friday and though the first couple of practices are in jerseys and shorts (no pads), coach Gus Malzahn said he was encouraged from what he saw from the two freshmen (one redshirt, one true freshman).
“We threw a lot at them but I thought it was good. For the most part, they handled the installation pretty well,” Malzahn said in his Friday post-practice press conference. “You can tell they really have done a lot of work on their own this summer and that was encouraging to see.”
In the summer period between spring practice and fall camp players are officially only allowed to be coached by the strength and are expected to run drills in player-run practices. Though Gatewood and Nix were unable to receive coaching from Malzahn over the summer, it sounds like both are showing improvement from the end of spring practice. Malzahn said he saw “desperation” (in a good way) from his two competing starting signal-callers on Friday.
“They’re both young guys, they’re both freshmen,” Malzahn said, “they’re both competing extremely hard and like I told you before: they’re desperate to win the job and I saw that desperation today.”
The full press conference can be viewed below:
Andrew writes about sports to fund his love of live music and collection of concert posters. He strongly endorses the Hall of Fame campaigns of Fred Taylor and Andruw Jones.
