So, kid, you want to become a national championship-caliber quarterback at Auburn.
It’s not going to be easy. Not going to be neat. Wear something you don’t mind getting a little dirty.
First go to another SEC school and mess up so badly they can think of no alternative short of putting you out on the curb. Pilfering a laptop and lifting money from a teammate have been taken. You’ll need to come up with your own clever misdemeanor.
Then trundle off to Dust Bowl Junior College, or some such two-year school far from home, where the water tower is the highest point in town. Do your penance while sharpening your talents on the whetstone of desperation.
By all means keep Gus Malzahn’s number among your contacts, for chances are good he is shopping what you are selling.
It almost formulaic now, this Auburn system of finding some of its more dynamic field leaders at a scratch-and-dent sale.
A couple of Georgia’s own have taken that route in the past four years, Atlanta’s Cam Newton and, now, Pineview’s Nick Marshall. Their stories parallel in marked ways; just change the names of their first stops (Florida to Georgia) and their junior-college layovers (Blinn College, Texas, to Garden City Community College, Kansas). Give them this, both have successfully put their misdeeds in the rearview mirror.
Whether Marshall will, like Newton, write a celebratory ending at Auburn — either at Monday’s BCS Championship game against Florida State, or wait till next year — is the great unknown.
Auburn folk certainly want to traffic in the “Cam-parisons,” for they are heartening. Marshall gives them credence.
“It’s funny how that worked out for both of us, coming back and playing in the national championship. But it’s a blessing,” he said.
As a freshman, he was cast out at Georgia, where he was a defensive back, when connected to a theft suffered by a fellow player.
(For the record, Marshall said there is no sort of open line between himself and Newton, who has his own playoff obligations this month. They are not, for all their likeness, pen pals or best buddies. “I haven’t communicated with Cam. I’ve just watched a couple of his highlights and then tried to embrace some of the moves he does and bring them to my game,” Marshall said).
At 6-foot-1, 210 pounds, smaller and slighter than Newton, Marshall is by no means as imposing a physical presence as his predecessor. Malzahn the head coach has not called as much upon Marshall’s arm as much as Malzahn the offensive coordinator did Newton’s. Still, because of the striking similarities of their backgrounds, we are compelled to compare.
Tigers running back Tre Mason: “Nick is a very dynamic runner; that’s the same with both he and Cam. Both of those guys have strong arms and are great on their feet. That just makes them dynamic players.”
Tight end C.J. Uzomah: “He’s not going to run you over like Cam did, but he’ll definitely make you fall and just kind of whiff and hit air.”
Offensive coordinator/quarterbacks coach Rhett Lashlee: “(Marshall’s) a phenomenal athlete and phenomenal winner. I get asked the question about him and Cam. Bottom line, certain guys have a knack for winning and making guys around them better. He’s one of those guys.”
That’s the common thread that binds the two to the hearts and hopes of Auburn fans. In his one season, Newton, with controversies over pay-for-play allegations ablaze, nonetheless took the Tigers on an unbeaten ride to a championship. And it was Marshall who arrived this summer as the only significant new playing part to a hapless bunch that won not a single SEC game in 2012. He must have done something right, for his team is 12-1 and one of the last two standing.
Marshall’s ability to so quickly adapt to Malzahn’s read-option offense — he missed spring practice and did not arrive at Auburn until June — has been startling. It’s not supposed to look this easy, this soon.
By the second week of September, leading Auburn on a winning drive in the waning seconds against Mississippi State, Marshall was a proven difference-maker. A few weeks later against Ole Miss, Marshall said, “I got comfortable in the offense because I started playing on my instinct and making plays with my legs. After that game, I just knew I could play ball from there on out.”
He is a master of misdirection; there is a natural fluidity to the way Marshall plays three-card Monte with the defense. Fake here, keep there, hide the ball until even the television cameraman can’t find it.
There is evident in the way he has accepted the run-first philosophy of this team a type of hunger that arises when you’ve been taken to the edge of insignificance, and snatched back at the last moment. A chastened Marshall has been a very coachable one. There are promises that he will get to unsheathe his arm a little more next season.
“He’s had no ego and done everything I’ve asked him to do,” Lashlee said, “and trying to do it to the best of his ability.
“A lot of times you can have guys that make plays like he can — I don’t want to call them renegades — but they kind of like to do their own thing. They’re like: ‘I understand what you’re saying Coach, but I’m going to go out and do my own thing.’ He hasn’t been that way.”
There will be other comparisons to be made Monday night. For Florida State has the Heisman Trophy winner on its side, a freshman quarterback no less.
Jameis Winston’s stats swamp those of Marshall. He is the headliner, the two-pronged athlete who just might be the closer on FSU’s baseball team this season. Marshall couldn’t touch his fastball.
But there is an argument to be made that Winston could not match Marshall’s jump shot — he averaged 28 points per game at Wilcox County High and was coveted by Georgia’s Mark Fox before being expelled.
The sizing up is almost done. Monday looms as the ultimate test of Auburn’s complex system of quarterback acquisition.
And for Marshall, that means a chance to produce a moment beyond compare.
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