Payton Thorne has always been a runner, but due to injuries and other factors, he hadn't been able to show that the last two seasons.
He got his chance on Saturday.
Thorne led Auburn in rushing yards with 123 and also ran in two touchdowns en route to a 45-13 Auburn win.
So what did Thorne show the world?
"I guess that I'm not that slow," Thorne said. "I told people all summer that I couldn't really run last year and two years ago I don't know how many yards I had, it wasn't anything crazy. But I can get some stuff done on the ground, and so, it was good to get back out there and running again."
Prior to his time at Auburn, Thorne hadn't been in an offense where the quarterback was directly involved with the run, so as a result, his career high in rushing yards was only 47 before Saturday.
New offense, new Payton.
"I never had anything blocked for me," Thorne said. "I was never really out there running schemes like that, so like I said, it was fun tonight to get that done tonight."
Not only did Thorne have fun running the ball, but his teammates enjoyed watching him. They also weren't surprised by the performance.
"I knew Payton could run like that," said tight end Rivaldo Fairweather. "He’s got sneaky speed. I told him he’s going to run this game and when the opportunity strikes, he did it. He’s pretty fast. He looked pretty fast out there."
In addition to his work on the ground, Thorne also racked up 282 yards and a touchdown through the air.
Coach Hugh Freeze liked the balance that the passing game brought.
"I thought he had a solid day," Freeze said. "We've got to get more confidence in us being a balanced offense and that was the goal."
It wasn’t a perfect day for the quarterback as he threw two interceptions, which is something Freeze wants cleaned up.
"The two interceptions, we just can't do it," Freeze said. "We've got to just keep working on it. You're going to have some of those, but one of them certainly shouldn't have happened."
In total, Thorne racked up 405 total yards, the most from an Auburn quarterback since Nick Marshall in the 2014 Iron Bowl.
It's a "cool" stat for Thorne, but it isn't really moving him. He's just focused on progressing.
"I’m not gonna go put that up on my wall or anything," Thorne said "I don’t know. It’s kind of a cool stat to hear. But like I said earlier, after mid-day tomorrow, this game is over. So you take the good things and build on them. You take the things we didn’t do as well as build on them no matter how many yards you had or didn’t have I guess. It’s the same process."
