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Gus shocked us all this morning with his announcement that Sean White would take over as the starter of Auburn's football team this Saturday. The redshirt freshman has been with the team for a while and knows the offense pretty well, but he's an unknown. He has yet to play a single snap in a college football game.
We do know he was the MVP of the Elite 11 in 2013. You can watch some highlights of him there, here. He played in the 2014 Under Armour All American Game, too. He looked very impressive in that game against some fantastic competition.
All we know of him, we know from high school and from this spring's A-Day game. WarRoom Eagle cut up the A-Day game, which lets us examine his performance. Let's take a gander at how he did.
His first drive begins at the 1:15 mark. Right off the bat you see the zip and accuracy he has. He has one overthrow on that drive, and I can almost chalk that one up to seeing the DB make a break on the ball and throwing it over the head to throw it away. He also has a great completion on a "sack," where he quickly stepped up on the pocket to avoid the rush. His check downs look good, too. Some of Johnson's check downs appeared to be thrown very underneath.
The second drive starts at 3:30. He throws some passes that are incompletions, but they were either catchable passes or thrown to the outside where the defender couldn't get it. I can't really evaluate his mobility given that he wasn't live, but he does have good feet and I like how he sold the read. Of course, Johnson did the same in A-Day. Again, neither of them were live and needed to worry about contact.
The third drive is short. Drive four begins at 6:24, it also doesn't show much, but I do love the hand off action.
7:27 is the fifth drive. The quick screens were a staple of his action during A-Day. It's also a lot of what we've seen so far this season. When he does throw it downfield, he definitely looks good, though.
9:06 is the sixth drive. The questionable pass around 9:54 is really one of the only BAD passes that he threw, and it was considered a catch.
White did not play in the second half of the game. For all the praise I'm giving White in this footage, though, remember one thing: Jeremy Johnson looked much better. It's mind-boggling to figure out what happened between then and the beginning of the season. I don't know why he suddenly started struggling when he had looked so good in his previous appearances. We had every reason to believe Jeremy Johnson would be able to handle the starting role.
All that matters right now is that Sean White will hit the field for his first collegiate game as the starting quarterback against Mississippi State. Strap yourselves in, folks. It's going to be interesting no matter what happens.