What Gatewood’s transfer means to Auburn

AUBURN | Joey Gatewood’s Auburn career has ended.

The promising dual-threat quarterback has elected to leave the team after a 6-2 start and will seek a transfer. That leaves the Tigers precariously thin at the quarterback position heading into the final four games of the regular season.

How will the loss of Gatewood impact Auburn this season and moving forward? We break it down below:

THE DEPTH CHART

Cord Sandberg will move up to backup quarterback and Auburn will look to another player, most likely running back JaTarvious Whitlow, as an emergency third-team option. In reality, Whitlow might be the next man up in a game if starter Bo Nix were injured as Sandberg is unlikely to be a long-term replacement. Whitlow played quarterback in high school and has been very productive as Auburn’s Wildcat quarterback this season.

Whitlow, however, isn’t 100 percent back healthy following a knee procedure, which puts Auburn in a tough situation going into Saturday’s game against Ole Miss if Nix were to suffer a serious injury. Several other players on the roster have played quarterback in high school including running back D.J. Williams and cornerback Javaris Davis. Auburn also has two walk-on quarterbacks, senior Wil Appleton and freshman Trey Lindsey, who could see their role in practice increase.

THE OFFENSE

It’s debatable how much immediate effect this will have on Auburn’s offense but it will certainly limit the options. It frankly appeared that Gatewood’s opportunities to play and his role as backup quarterback were shrinking in the second half of the season, and that’s certainly one of the reasons he chose to leave the team now and not in December or January. It was also clear Gus Malzahn wasn’t benching starter Bo Nix for Gatewood, even in games where Nix struggled to complete 40 percent of his passes and the offense floundered.

But the option of bringing in Gatewood to run the zone read and help open up the running game is now completely off the table. This probably limits how much running Nix will be asked to do over the final four games too for fear of injury. That could be a concern as Auburn faces three of the SEC’s top six rushing defenses down the stretch in No. 5 Ole Miss, No. 1 Georgia and No. 6 Alabama.

THE FALLOUT

Gatewood was popular among his teammates but he wasn’t a polarizing figure. He was more of a head down, do your job kind of player that didn’t rock the boat. I expect his former teammates to be supportive but I wouldn’t expect this to affect their preparations for the Ole Miss game. Most around Auburn’s football program expected Gatewood to transfer after this season and a plan was already in place for that probability. This is the reality in college football today. Two talented quarterbacks aren’t going to stay on one team together for long. We’ve seen it at other top programs like Alabama, Georgia, Clemson and Ohio State — and now Auburn.

Really, the most interesting result of Gatewood’s move will be how it turns out in the next couple of years. Did Malzahn make the right decision by choosing and sticking so steadfastly with Nix or would giving Gatewood more of an opportunity benefit the running game and give the Tigers that dual-threat ability at the position it hasn’t had since Cam Newton and Nick Marshall? Those three seasons under Newton and Marshall just happen to coincide with the three of the best offenses Malzahn’s had at Auburn.

Gatewood’s best bet may be to spend a year at a junior college, where he can be the starter and play every game, before moving on to another Power 5 program. He really needs that playing experience. Nix needs to continue to develop and, quite frankly, Malzahn needs to develop his offensive scheme around him if this is going to work out for Auburn.

RECRUITING

Auburn already has quarterbacks committed in the 2020 class, Chayil Garnett from Lakeland, Fla, and the 2021 class, Aaron McLaughlin from Alpharetta, Ga. With the loss of Gatewood, the Tigers will now look to sign an additional quarterback in the 2020 class with North Carolina commitment Jacolby Criswell being a top target. Criswell is a dual-threat quarterback from Morrilton, Ark, who chose the Tar Heels over more than a dozen other offers in June. Jeffrey Lee has written about Criswell several times including today.