Auburn Football names captains for 2023 Season
The Auburn Tigers have their leaders for the 2023 football season. Offensive lineman Kam Stutts, quarterback Payton Thorne, tight end luke deal, and defensive lineman Elijah McAllister were named the team’s captains on Tuesday.
The decision to make Stutts and Deal captains for the 2023 season is far from surprising, as both players have been with the team since 2019. The slight surprise on this list are Payton Thorne and Elijah McAllister, both of whom attended other schools in 2022. It speaks to both Thorne and McAllister’s character that the coaching staff saw enough from them in such a short period of time to make them captains of their peers.
Kam Stutts has been with the Tigers since 2019, playing sparingly his first few seasons before starting at both guard positions a season ago. He was also one of the Auburn players made available to the media on Monday, showing the staff’s confidence in him to be the face of the line in front of the press. The fifth-year senior earned his bachelor’s degree last spring, and will begin working towards a master’s degree in business administration this fall.
Like Stutts, tight end luke deal is entering his fifth season with Auburn. The former high school quarterback has never seen much action on the field, but his consistent leadership off of it has defined his Auburn career. Deal was also made available during Monday’s media session. Like a true leader, Deal spent the majority of his time with the media praising his teammates, specifically the running back room.
Over the previous five years, only twice has the Auburn coaching staff named their starting quarterback a captain; (Bo Nix in 2020 and Jarrett Stidham in 2018) In both of those cases, the quarterback was coming off a great season at Auburn in which he had the whole previous year to lead his teammates into battle every Saturday.
2023 captain Payton Thorne has yet to play a snap for Auburn. That just alludes to the kind of leader that Thorne is, and can be, for this newly put-together Auburn team.
Defensive lineman Elijah McAllister is the fourth and final captain for Auburn’s football team in 2023. The senior from Asbury Park, NJ was “The Boss” during his time at Vanderbilt, serving as team captain twice and playing in 36 total games for the Commodores.
McAllister will go into the season as the starting EDGE linebacker for Auburn, or as they like to call the “jack.” He’ll have plenty of early opportunities against lesser competition to make a name for himself on Auburn’s defensive front.
The announcement of Auburn’s 2023 captains has officially buttoned up a long, active, offseason on the Plains. Hugh Freeze’s team finally gets to play a meaningful game in Jordan-Hare this Saturday at 2:30 CST vs. UMass.
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