The day of new QBs: Auburn's Jeremy Johnson stalls while others shine
Auburn's Jeremy Johnson was supposed to be the cream of the new-quarterback crop. Instead, he was uneven on Saturday and not the most impressive signal caller in his own game.
By
Dennis Dodd
•
3 min read
At least Jeremy Johnson was trusted enough Saturday to throw an incompletion to help run out the clock. So there was that for Auburn’s next-big-thing quarterback.
Otherwise, Johnson's first game in full possession of Gus Malzahn's Corvette was lacking: three interceptions operating an offense that Cam Newton and Nick Marshall had made famous.
There were too many bad decisions. There was too much tentativeness. There were plenty of success stories for new quarterbacks around the country. Johnson wasn't one of them. Malzahn allowed his carefully developed prodigy to pass all of nine times in the second half.
Will Muschamp's defense and the running game had taken over.
By the end of Auburn's 31-24 win over Louisville, the losing quarterback (true freshman Lamar Jackson) was actually the player of the game -- at least in the eyes of the SEC on CBS crew.
"That freshman quarterback is electric," Malzahn said.
Johnson wasn't. His day ended with a fizzle. With seconds left against Louisville, Malzahn elected to have his quarterback heave the ball away to run out the clock instead of risking a blocked punt.
There will be better times ahead -- all Tigers hope. For now, Johnson is a study in the vagaries of new quarterbacks.
The buzz on the junior from Montgomery, Ala., was building for two seasons as he backed up Marshall. Johnson was more athletic, more accurate, they said.
Then he threw for a measly 137 yards with those three picks against the Cardinals.
At the same time, UCLA's Josh Rosen was making a stunning debut for UCLA. BYU freshman Tanner Mangum threw a Hail Mary game-winner at the gun at Nebraska.
Anyone hear of Clayton Thorson? Neither did Stanford after the redshirt freshman beat the Cardinal in his first career start, 16-6.
"We had no game film on him," Stanford coach David Shaw said.
Notre Dame's Malik Zaire looked like a ready-made Heisman contender in his second career start -- first at home -- in a rout of Texas. The Irish looked like more than playoff contenders after Zaire threw for 313 yards and three touchdowns.
Alabama was already in that playoff space despite so much quarterback angst in the offseason. Senior Jacob Coker looked a lot like the Nick Saban quarterbacks before him -- steady, not spectacular. Beginning his fourth season, the senior had thrown 100 passes in his career at two different schools.
In an impressive win over Wisconsin, it looked like the wait for Coker was worth it after being behind Jameis Winston (at FSU) and Blake Sims, but Coker was then replaced by Cooper Bateman in the third quarter in a move that suggested the job is still open.
As long as Kenyan Drake and Derrick Henry keep pounding, it may not matter.
Mangum stepped him after returning from his Mormon mission to Chile this summer. In his first start at Oregon, grad transfer Vernon Adams led the Ducks over his former teammates at Eastern Washington. That was 23 days after he graduated from Eastern Washington.
How hard can it be? It was a struggle for Johnson who had been carefully groomed for this moment, backing up Marshall for two years.
While Johnson isn't exactly a "new" starter, this is the first time the Auburn program has been his. In his 14th career game -- and second season-opener -- no start has been more important.
Auburn is projected as a playoff team, which means its projected to win the SEC … which means Johnson is projected to kill it.
The future at quarterback for Auburn ended the day perhaps not even the best quarterback in Alabama.
