Auburn fans celebrated the start of a new era on Saturday by watching their favorite team earn a 59-14 win over UMass.
Halfway across the country, a member of the program’s past era celebrated a win of his own.
[autotag]TJ Finley[/autotag] appeared in 13 games during his two-year stint with Auburn and would pass for 1,258 yards and 12 touchdowns. Finley learned that the quarterback battle at Auburn would be moving forward without him, so he elected to enter the transfer portal. He found a new home within the Sun Belt Conference at Texas State University.
On Saturday, Finley threw for 298 yards and three touchdowns in Texas State’s upset win over Baylor in Waco.
Texas State head coach GJ Kinne calls Finley a “difference-maker” and recalls when he discovered Finley was in the transfer portal.
“I was in New Braunfels, over there and I saw his name go in the portal,” Kinne tells Andy Staples of On3. “I talked to a couple people, got his number, reached out to him and kind of gave him my spiel. He came on an official visit later that week and he had a couple other P5 OVs lined up, and after the OV he canceled them and decided to be a Bobcat, which was huge.”
The Bobcats’ win over Baylor was impressive, and Kinne will rely on Finley to produce more wins this season. Finley steps into a new situation in San Marcos, which may help him reach his full potential.
“He just needed to be in the right system,” Kinne said. “If you look at his career, the guys that recruited him for their system kind of left. So it was a situation where we felt really confident in his abilities, we just had to get him here.”
Finley will face another challenge this Saturday, as he will lead Texas State into the Alamodome to face UTSA.
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