Confidence in Stidham remains high

AUBURN | Jarrett Stidham has yet to hit his stride three games into this season.

But Auburn’s coaches remain confident it’s just a matter of time before the junior and the offense start putting up big numbers.

“He’d like to have a couple of those plays back, but Jarrett, we have a lot of confidence in him,” Auburn coach Gus Malzahn said. “He’ll rebound. He’s going to play extremely well. He’s one of the best quarterbacks in college football.

“He’s our guy, and he’ll continue to work hard in practice and just improve and get better at the things that we feel like he needs to get better and he feels like he needs to get better.”

Stidham threw two interceptions in a 22-21 loss to LSU last weekend. He’s also struggled to connect on the deep passes that were such a key part of last year’s offense. He completed 25 passes of 30 or more yards last season, but just two so far this fall.

“I mean, not throw it to the other team, obviously,” said Stidham on what he’s working to improve. “That's kind of my big thing. But I think there's a lot of different things as an offense that we can work on. If it's little technique things. Ball placement for me is a very big deal obviously for every game. Just trying to find those little details within our offense that we can change and get better at.”

Last season, Stidham completed an SEC-best 66.5 percent of his passes for 3,158 yards, second-most in Auburn history, along with 18 touchdown and six interceptions. This season, he’s completed 64.0 percent of his passes for 584 yards with three touchdowns and two interceptions.

The numbers aren’t that far off, and as offensive coordinator Chip Lindsey pointed out Sunday, Stidham is as hard on himself as any coach.

“I think Jarrett would tell you he didn’t play his best, but a the same time he did a lot of good things too,” Lindsey said. “He made some really good throws, the one that comes to mind is to Darius (Slayton) down the left sideline. That was a really nice throw and catch. I think he managed the game well. He checked us and got us into some plays, which was really nice because it makes it where they can’t check the defense when he does that. He made some good decisions on RPO’s whether to hand it or throw it.

“At the same time I know he would like those two throws he made back, especially the one early. He just missed inside and he’ll be the first to tell you that. The other one there was a little bit of miscommunication. The corner made a good play and we probably went to the back shoulder one too many times.”

No. 9 Auburn hosts Arkansas Saturday at 6:30 p.m. CT on the SEC Network.