AU FOOTBALL: Broken foot may sideline Hawthorne

Experience at wide receiver could be even harder for Auburn to come by with the start of the 2009 season just weeks away.

AuburnSports.com reported that veteran wideout Tim Hawthorne broke a bone in his right foot during summer workouts Thursday and could be out for at least four weeks.

The junior is supposed to be evaluated today by doctors in Birmingham, the Web site said.

It’s been a tough two years for Hawthorne, who was considered a can’t-miss recruit out of Homewood High School. In 2007, Hawthorne missed spring practice after being involved in a car accident that killed one of his close friends. He missed a majority of the next spring with a broken arm.

Last season, Hawthorne played in all 12 of the Tigers’ games, catching eight passes for 203 yards. For his career, he has 12 catches for 250 yards and no touchdowns.

With Auburn’s wide receiving corps already inexperienced, this blow certainly doesn’t help.

Montez Billings is the only returning wideout to catch more than 10 passes last season. Billings, however, sat out the entire spring for an unknown academic reason. It is unclear weather Billings will even play this season.

“I always try to take things on a positive slant,” Auburn head coach Gene Chizik told the Mobile Press-Register in May. “I’m certainly optimistic about it. We just have to work through a couple of kinks here and there. With all things working, I think we have a good shot of getting that done.”

Auburn wide receivers coach Trooper Taylor said Hawthorne was a bright spot during spring workouts.

“He’s coming into his own,” Taylor said in April prior to A-Day. “He certainly hasn’t arrived, but he’s departed. He’s on his way.

“Some of them haven’t even left the ground, but at least he’s in the air right now.”

When asked by the Opelika-Auburn News in early June how if his wide receivers were where he wanted them to be heading into summer workouts, Taylor responded: “No, not even close. We spent more time on fundamentals than on plays and stuff (in the spring). They lacked a lot of fundamentals. And that’s not a knock on the old coach. The kids are accountable, too. They should have been trying to do what they were teaching them. At the end of the day when all things are equal, the things that will separate you as a player is your fundamentals and they were lacking those, so we had to get that done.

“To me, I didn’t get enough time on the X’s and O’s part on it. We’d like to put more offense in than we did. But I felt good coming out of it seeing who could play and all that deal.”

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