Hugh Freeze can be debated on plenty of things, including whether he’s making the right decision about Auburn’s quarterback. But at least Freeze is being honest about it.
“Yeah, I think about all that stuff,” he said. “I wake up thinking about it; I go to to bed thinking about it,” he said. “To say, we’re not thinking about every scenario would not be the truth.”
This came in response to a question about whether going to Hank Brown, a redshirt freshman, would lose the chance to give Brown more experience for the future. Brown was a three-star recruit a year ago, so who knows if he’s the long-term answer or if freshman Walker White is close to ready. But current starter Payton Thorne threw four interceptions in a home loss to Cal on Saturday, so he certainly doesn’t appear the answer.
There’s a different dilemma at Florida, where veteran Graham Mertz may still give his team the best chance to win. Yes, he struggled in the opening loss to Miami, but so did a lot of Gators, and Mertz earned some credibility last year when he led the SEC in completion percentage and was fourth in completion yards per game. But freshman DJ Lagway offers so much upside that he could help Billy Napier save his job. (Assuming that’s still possible.)
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Two weeks into the season, these are the SEC’s two most burning quarterback decisions. They stand out in part because they’re happening at Florida and Auburn and because they come in a year when most of the quarterback situations are pretty settled:
• Five teams had returning starters who look as good as expected: Carson Beck (Georgia), Jalen Milroe (Alabama), Quinn Ewers (Texas), Jaxson Dart (Ole Miss) and Brady Cook (Missouri). Not coincidentally, these were the five highest-ranked teams entering the season.
• Tennessee’s Nico Iamaleava, who got one start at the end of last year, looks like the real deal. LSU’s Garrett Nussmeier, another elevated starter, suffered a loss in his opener but threw for 300 yards in that game. Redshirt freshman LaNorris Sellers led South Carolina to a road upset against Kentucky in only his second start.
• Two transfers look like steals: Vanderbilt’s Diego Pavia and Arkansas’ Taylen Green. Another transfer, Mississippi State’s Blake Shapen, is 1-1 but that is for a team without high expectations. Then there’s Brock Vandagriff at Kentucky, off to a rough start, but it’s early.
• As for the other early disappointments: Texas A&M’s Conner Weigman is not off to a great start. Oklahoma’s Jackson Arnold has been uneven.
Florida and Auburn, however, are the most fascinating because they were completely expected dilemmas, and each team already losing a game brings the quarterback question to the fore. The issues speak to central questions: What are these teams trying to accomplish?
Kirby Smart faced this question his first year at Georgia. He had a five-star freshman quarterback, Jacob Eason, who was already anointed by fans as the savior of the program. But Smart had a fifth-year returning starter, Greyson Lambert, who won 10 starts the previous year and took most of the snaps in Smart’s debut, a win over North Carolina.
Realistically, Smart knew he was playing for the future, so he went to Eason in the second game and had to pull him for Lambert to avoid an embarrassing loss to an FCS team, Nicholls State. But then Smart went back to Eason, who got his experience and might have been the starter in the magical run to the 2017 national championship game, although we’ll never know since Eason got hurt and Jake Fromm replaced him. (Smart’s history of quarterback decisions is full of lessons, including that teams can sign five-star players all over the place but end up winning back-to-back championships with a walk-on.)
Switching to the young quarterback is a bit like buying a new car: It loses a lot of its value once it’s driven off the lot. And as exciting as it is to drive the shiny new car, the old car can still be reliable, as long as it wasn’t sold or settled to rust. But sometimes teams don’t have anything to lose, which is where Florida and Auburn are. They’re playing for the future.
In Napier’s case, he’s playing for his job, which makes this a tough call. Does Lagway play well enough to win games that Mertz would not, or does it risk actually losing more but with hope for the future? In the old days, Napier could showcase Lagway to the fans — and his bosses — as almost a warning: Get rid of me, you may lose him, or at least stunt his development. But in this day of unlimited transferring, Lagway could leave either way.
Freeze isn’t on the hot seat yet, so his decision seems more clear: Thorne has done enough to be benched. Brown looked good in his one appearance last year, the Music City Bowl (132 passing yards on 7-of-9 passing) and in the opener against Alabama A&M (96 yards in just five passes, two touchdowns). Yes, those are only two appearances, and we’re not talking about someone with a huge pedigree. But Freeze has the job runway to see what he has in Brown and White, the fifth-ranked quarterback in the 2024 class.
Napier’s decision is tougher. For now, he seems to content to go with the “play both quarterbacks” scenario. Sometimes that works, sometimes it doesn’t. Perhaps it lets the answer be evident on the field. But Napier can’t afford to lose too many games on the way to reaching that decision, so the answer to his dilemma may be a boring one: The coaches need to base it on practice and what they honestly see from each player. If the gap between Mertz and Lagway is small, then they probably should go to Lagway, as unfair as it may be to Mertz. If the gap is bigger, Napier isn’t going to save his job by going 4-8 with an exciting but raw quarterback who throws 20 picks.
Of course, if whoever is at quarterback plays great but the rest of the team struggles and keeps making silly mistakes, then it won’t matter. But the quarterback is the most important position, and that offers a chance to make a statement about the direction of the program. That’s why the decisions Freeze and Napier make, as different as the decisions are, should say a lot.
(Top photos of Billy Napier, left, and Hugh Freeze: Matt Pendleton, John Reed / USA Today)
