Payton Thorne transfers to Auburn: What it means for the Tigers ahead of 2023 college football season

What you need to know as Auburn picks up Payton Thorne from the transfer portal and the quarterback competition to come ahead of 2023

Auburn has a new and intriguing piece in the quarterback competition this preseason as Payton Thorne announced his commitment to the Tigers after entering the college football transfer portal from Michigan State in recent days.

Thorne entered the transfer portal earlier this week around the time the spring window was closing and now joins an interesting quarterback battle at Auburn alongside Robby Ashford and Holden Geriner for first-year head coach Hugh Freeze and his coaching staff to figure out before fall.

Related: College football transfer portal team rankings for 2023

What it means for Auburn

1. Power Five experience. Auburn scores a quarterback who has plenty of reps logged as a starter at the highest level of college football, something of a rare commodity when looking at the other options still remaining in the transfer portal. The reason for going after a QB in the portal at this stage is not to integrate them into the system and have them learn it for a year, but rather to start right away and immediately improve your fortunes at the position, a credible possibility with Thorne in the picture as Auburn hopes to build Ashford as the QB of the future.

2. Upgrade on offense. Auburn's offense has not performed up to standard the last several seasons, posting just under 25 points per game a year ago, ranking fourth-worst in the SEC, and was last in the league with just 172 passing yards per game. It hasn't produced a 3,000 yard passer since Jarrett Stidham in 2017. The departure of tailback Tank Bigsby places a premium on Auburn being able to throw the ball with authority to get ahead of the sticks, and Thorne's history of accurate, mature, and reliable stewardship of an offense is a positive move in that direction.

3. Is a new WR coming, too? Not long after Thorne entered the portal, fellow MSU wideout Keon Coleman did the same, and it's worth asking if the two will want to pair up again this fall. Coleman led the Spartans with 58 catches for 798 yards and caught a team-high seven touchdowns. Five of those seven were 20-plus yards, showing serious athletic potential in coverage and space.

Thorne at Michigan State

Thorne initially signed with Michigan State as part of the school's 2018 recruiting class and logged a ton of starting snaps the last three seasons, totaling 6,493 passing yards while scoring 49 touchdowns in the air and throwing 24 interceptions while hitting over 61 percent of his passing attempts.

Last season as starter in 12 games, Thorne hit 2,679 yards passing with 19 touchdowns and one rushing score. The year before was his best, finishing with 3,232 yards and 27 touchdowns as the Spartans finished Peach Bowl champions, a game in which the quarterback scored three times while hitting over 350 yards passing.

Thorne's arrival at Auburn comes as the school saw quarterback TJ Finley enter the transfer portal, leaving Robby Ashford as the presumptive other top option to battle with Thorne for the starting role.

College football transfer portal

The NCAA Transfer Portal is a private database that includes the names of student-athletes in every sport at the Division I, II, and III levels. The full list of names is not available to the public.

A player can enter their name into the transfer portal through their school's compliance office. Once a player gives written notification of their intent to transfer, the office puts the player's name into the database, and they officially become a transfer.

The compliance office has 48 hours to comply with the player's request and NCAA rules forbid anyone from refusing that request.

The database includes the player's name, contact information, info on whether the player was on scholarship, and if he is a graduate student.

Once a player's name appears in the transfer portal database, other schools are free to contact the player, who can change his mind at any point in the process and withdraw from the transfer portal.

Notably, once a player enters the portal, his school no longer has to honor the athletic scholarship it gave him. And if that player decides to leave the portal and return to his original school, the school doesn't have to give him another scholarship.

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