New Auburn Tigers QB Deuce Knight ‘All About Business’

Auburn Tigers freshman quarterback Deuce Knight is getting a crash course in SEC football as an early enrollee. He’s been splitting time with Oklahoma transfer Jackson Arnold as the only two quarterbacks on campus, and he understands the importance of the valuable reps he’s been getting.

“The spring has been great,” Knight told reporters this week. “There’s been a lot of competition. We got great guys on both sides of the ball.”

“It’s been big,” Knight said of getting extended looks in practice. “I’m a guy that has to go out there and do things. Getting all these reps has been helping me learn the offense. To see different looks with everything I’m doing, and just coming up with ways to play faster.”

Auburn has the luxury of bringing Knight along slowly with Jackson Arnold being brought in as the presumed starter heading into the fall. With just Knight and Arnold at spring practice, the two have gotten plenty of work side by side.

This year, Arnold is being counted on to help solve the poor quarterback play in that has plagued Hugh Freeze and the Tigers the last two seasons, but he is bringing other benefits as well. He’s already taken the younger Knight under his wing.

“I’ll call Jackson at night if we’re looking over a script or something to ask him a question….he’ll have the answer for me,” said Knight. “I feel like he’s another coach on the field.”

Part of the transition from high school to college is time management. There is considerably more free time, even for student athletes on the next level, than the sometimes 6 a.m. to 11 p.m. grinds during football game days.

“It’s been good,” Knight said of his first months on a college campus. “I would just say managing time. I feel like I’ve got a little more time because I’m not at school for eight hours of the day and then practice. It’s been a good transition.