Ex-Michigan State football QB Payton Thorne transferring to Auburn Tigers

Michigan State football enters its summer with a wide-open quarterback competition. And Payton Thorne is no longer part of it.

The Spartans’ two-time starter and captain is heading to Auburn as a graduate transfer, he announced on Twitter Friday. Thorne delivered a shock to his teammates, coach Mel Tucker and his staff Sunday when the fifth-year senior entered the NCAA transfer portal with two years of eligibility remaining.

That leaves redshirt junior Noah Kim and redshirt freshman Katin Houser as the two quarterbacks remaining from the open competition Tucker announced to the media March 13, two days before MSU opened its 15 spring practices. The Spartans, who finished last season 5-7 in Thorne’s second year as the starter, also bring in true freshman Sam Leavitt from Oregon this summer.

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Thorne may soon have a familiar target to throw to in the SEC, as well, with wide receiver Keon Coleman, who also entered the transfer portal on Sunday, reportedly visiting the Tigers this weekend. Coleman caught 58 passes for 798 yards and seven touchdowns for the Spartans last season. The receiver has also been reportedly linked to Florida State, according to 247 Sports

The Tigers also went 5-7, firing Bryan Harsin on Oct. 31 and replacing him with Hugh Freeze less than a month later. Auburn had three quarterbacks competing for its starting job this spring in junior T.J. Finley, redshirt sophomore Robby Ashford and redshirt freshman Holden Geriner. Finley, a one-time LSU transfer, entered the portal Tuesday as a graduate transfer after beginning 2022 as the Tigers' starter before getting injured. Ashford, an Oregon transfer, finished last season as the starter.

With the chapter closed on the Thorne era, it appears to be a two-man race for the starting job between Kim and Houser to start the Spartans’ Sept. 1 opener against Central Michigan.

Kim, a former three-star recruit who was part of Mark Dantonio’s final recruiting class in 2020, went 14-for-19 for 174 yards with three touchdowns and no interceptions in 38 snaps last season spread over four appearances against Western Michigan, Akron, Minnesota and Ohio State. It was the first game action of his career for the 6-foot-2, 185-pound native of Centerville, Virginia, who initially had committed to Virginia Tech before Dantonio’s staff flipped him before the early signing period in October 2019.

Houser, Tucker’s first four-star quarterback, got six snaps late in a 52-0 blowout of Akron, going 1-for-2 passing for 2 yards, in his only action as a true freshman. The 6-3, 213-pound native of Anaheim, California, has not been a full-time starting quarterback since 2019 at Liberty High in Nevada; Houser split snaps with four-star prospect and Louisville signee Pierce Clarkson his final two seasons in 2021 (spring and fall) at St. John Bosco in California.

Tucker and his staff could still pursue a transfer quarterback. However, the top 47 quarterbacks in 247 Sports’ ranking of QBs in the portal all have committed to other programs, most recently with Ben Bryant going from Cincinnati to Northwestern and Hayden Wolff going from Old Dominion to Western Michigan.

In watching Thorne leave, though, MSU loses one of its most prolific passers in program history.

Thorne’s 49 touchdown tosses are fourth-most in MSU history. His 6,494 passing yards are sixth-all-time, his 60.9% completion percentage is fifth-best, and his 524 completions rank sixth. In the three seasons after his redshirt year in 2019, Thorne progressively improved his accuracy against Big Ten opponents, going from 56.5% in four appearances and one start in 2020 to 59.5% in 2021 and 62.1% last season in nine conference games.

In his 26 career starts, the 6-2, 205-pounder from Naperville, Illinois, had a 16-10 record and led the Spartans to an 11-2 finish and Peach Bowl victory in 2021 as a first-year starter. That season — with future NFL players Kenneth Walker III, Jayden Reed, Jalen Nailor, Connor Heyward and A.J. Arcuri on his offense — Thorne broke Kirk Cousins’ MSU single-season touchdown record with 27 TD passes while throwing just 10 interceptions. He also threw for 3,233 yards, which is the third highest single-season total in school history, while boasting the sixth-best passer rating (148.1) among Spartan quarterbacks in one season.

Thorne’s 248.7 yards per game in 2021 are third-highest in MSU’s single-season record books, and his 234 completions were sixth and 388 attempts seventh on the school's single-season list.

But it wasn’t just Thorne’s arm that affected opposing defenses. A true dual-threat quarterback in read-option situations, he finished with 181 net rushing yards on 82 attempts in 2021. Taking out the 21 times he was sacked, Thorne ran 61 times for 332 yards — 54 more yards than Walker’s backup, Jordon Simmons — and his four rushing touchdowns finished second to Walker’s 18. Wide receiver Reed was the only other Spartan with a rushing TD that season.

Despite starting 26 of MSU’s 32 games in the Tucker Era, Thorne — a Mark Dantonio recruit in 2019 — never appeared to fully endear himself to the new staff or the fan base.

Tucker gave the starting job in 2020 to Rocky Lombardi, who went 2-4 that year before he was hurt; Thorne started the finale at Penn State and threw for a school freshman-record 325 yards with three touchdowns in the road loss. Lombardi transferred to Northern Illinois after that season when Tucker brought in Temple grad transfer Anthony Russo to compete for the job. Thorne, according to Tucker, edged out Russo during preseason camp, then started every game and played all but 23 snaps in his historic 2021 season.

Thorne entered last fall as the incumbent, but he was injured in the opener against WMU and took a few other early hits that diminished his ability to run (he finished with 42 yards and one TD) and lowered his passing totals to 2,679 yards with 19 scores and 11 picks. Thorne guided the passing offense to 240 yards a game (57th out of 130 Football Bowl Subdivision teams) with the 63rd-best passing efficiency. Overall, however, the offense sputtered with his physical struggles.

MSU finished tied for 90th in points per game (24.4), 96th in total offense (at 353 yards) and 110th in rushing (113 yards). Thorne’s yards per attempt plummeted from 8.3 in 2021 to 6.9 last season. The Spartans were 127th in time of possession (26:13), partly due to the offense’s inability to sustain drives when they got the ball but also because their defense was gouged by opposing running backs and time-consuming drives all fall and finished 101st in rushing yards allowed per game (178.6).

Contact Chris Solari: csolari@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @chrissolari.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Michigan State football QB Payton Thorne transferring to Auburn