Auburn Tigers QB Payton Thorne is Already on Hot Seat

As the dust settles over a calamitous Auburn Tigers loss, fingers will Inevitably point directly at embattled quarterback Payton Thorne.

Auburn Tigers quarterback Payton Thorne invited pressure from the Cal defense all night in a 21-14 loss. / John Reed-Imagn Images

When the sea of optimism subsided, and the huge crowd ebbed away from the stands of Jordan-Hare stadium on Saturday evening, Auburn Tigers head coach Hugh Freeze was left to scratch his head in disbelief. His Tigers team had just been embarrassed at home in a 21-14 loss to Cal in which his hand-picked quarterback tossed four interceptions and looked bad doing it.

"I thought we'd be further ahead," Freeze admitted of his offense after the game.

"I thought we were running the ball pretty effectively at the beginning of the second half, but we could never get into any kind of rhythm," Freeze said. "We try to mix it up between run and pass and we get a sack and put us in third and long. It's just a disappointing day for us, for sure, in our building. It's not our expectation and the way we should play offensive football."

Coming up with the answers as to exactly how the Tigers turned an avalanche of points into turnovers in the space of just seven days - should inevitably lead to some pretty intensive finger pointing.

Caught in the headlights will be starting quarterback Payton Thorne, after all,  his four interceptions conspired to hand the Cal Bears a huge road win. Of course, the box score speaks for itself rather resoundingly, but even Freeze admitted they did little to protect their signal caller as a collective unit.

"We struggled to protect him tonight, a lot," said Freeze of Thorne. "We had guys running wide open and really struggled to protect. I'd rather watch the film and talk about it Monday on his play.

"They did a great job of mixing it up, they really did," Freeze confessed after the final gun. "A great job of bringing pressure, loading the box, bringing coverage. They did a really nice job of mixing it all up and keeping us guessing. Give them credit for that. They did a really nice job."

Prior to the Cal game, Freeze had demanded that Thorne give him more, especially when it came to protecting himself and getting his troops into the right play call. While a great deal of what they didn't accomplish in pass pro won't completely rest on Thorne's weary shoulders, his total of four interceptions does tend to lead to drastic action being taken.

Thorne looked hesitant and indecisive in the pocket. He invited pressure and relied on contested catches to covered receivers. The third interception epitomized Thorne's night. Cam Coleman had been banged up on the previous play and was trying to sub out of the game. With the clock running down, he was unable to come off.

Thorne lacked the awareness that his star receiver was in pain, and threw a fade in the direction of Coleman that was intercepted. Senior wide receiver Robert Lewis looked back from the middle of the field in disbelief. He was standing wide open after he was left uncovered on a post route.

Quite simply, every time coach Freeze looked for some sort of respite - Cal head coach Justin Wilcox just kept on applying the pressure. While a lot of positives can be taken by the overall performance of the defensive unit, Auburn got flat out beat in the other two phases, and Freeze knows it.

"You know, their special teams played really well in the third quarter and kept us pinned," Freeze noted of the struggles beyond just the issues on offense. "But you cannot turn the ball over five times and expect to beat really anybody. And we never got into any kind of sync offensively."

When framed in the brutal landscape of the SEC, it's all akin to ringing the dinner bell for the rabid hyenas to gather round and feed on the carcass of the stricken beast. Therefore, we can fully expect other teams to follow the Cal defensive blueprint until Thorne can somehow find his feet once again.

Moving forward, just how fully committed Freeze is to Thorne will surely be severely tested, the natives are already getting pretty restless.

To a huge extent both men are tied to each other, at least in the short term, especially with three-consecutive home games on the horizon.

Turning the listing ship back around in short order is going to mean standing tall and holding the line above all else, but throwing the baby out with the bath water will always be a perilously easy reset position.