As the crowd of a packed Stanford Stadium zeroed in on his snap, Peayton Thorne fumbled, his throw spiralling into a botched handoff. The loss of crucial yards while the Tigers were trailing behind at 21-10, and the ear-piercing cheers from the Bulldogs fans that followed were enough to signal that Georgia had already won over the Tigers mentally.
The same night, on October 5, 2024, the Auburn Tigers head coach, Hugh Freeze, did something rarely seen in the football world as a response to something that was rather pretty common in it: he threw his QB Thorne under the bus, blaming him for a failed drive instead of shouldering the blame as the head coach.