Todd not willing to let boos affect play

Chris Todd said all the right things.

It’s kind of his job, being the quarterback and all.

Sure, the booing hurts, but to hear Auburn’s starting quarterback tell it, it’s just one more facet of the job description.

“It’s part of it,” Todd said. “It’s a hard situation.

“You have to understand that. I’ve talked to several people about the same situation that people have had in the past. You just have to deal with it and go on and just play your game.”

Todd was booed Saturday in the Tigers’ 14-12 win over Tennessee during the second half, where he admittedly struggled to make plays. On top of that, the capacity crowd at Jordan-Hare Stadium (87,451) cheered and chanted the name of backup quarterback Kodi Burns when he finally made an appearance after a two-game absence.

“It’s tough,” Auburn offensive coordinator Tony Franklin said. “It’s hard on a young man to come into boos and people screaming the other guy’s name and all that stuff. That’s hard on any human being.

It’s just human nature, it would be difficult on anybody.”

Even though Todd made no excuses after the game. He told reporters that the boos didn’t affect him, and even if it did, he didn’t want to use that as an excuse. He said he still needed to make plays, regardless the situation.

But he didn’t.

Todd, after playing a perfect 27 of his first 28 snaps, according to Franklin, struggled in the second half after being replaced by Burns with 5:36 to play in the second quarter.

After starting the game 9-for-12 for 63 yards and a touchdown pass, Todd finished 5-for-11 for 30 yards and an interception.

Franklin said he rallied around his quarterback after the game.

“I talked with him about it, tried to coach him up on ‘You know, it’s never personal. Those people don’t know you. They don’t know who you are. They don’t hate you. They hate me, but they don’t hate you,’” he said. “I’ve tried to deflect that from him to understand.”

But no matter who’s there to shield you, it still hurts says former Auburn quarterback Ben Leard, who played for the Tigers from 1997-2000.

“It’s a demoralizing experience,” Leard said. “You expect to get booed on the road, but when you get booed by 86,000 of your own fans, it hurts.

“Speaking from my own experience, it’s something you’ll remember for a long, long, long time.”

Leard says he remembers everything about the first time he was booed at home. It was 1998 in a 17-9 loss to No. 3 Tennessee. He threw a bad pass for a loss of 4-yards to tailback Cencade Pennington, and then down came the boos.

“It wasn’t just that play,” said Leard, who eventually lost the starting job to Gabe Gross. “It was a culmination of the way I’d been playing up to that point. I stunk. But that’s when it reached the peak.”

Leard says he can still remember the faces of the fans as the booed.

“The same people who are cheering you on at Tiger Walk are the same people turning their shoulder to you after the game when you walk out of the locker room,” he said. “It’s a tough, tough situation.”

But you can over come it, says Leard, and that is what people will remember most about you as a quarterback.

“I felt bad for Chris,” Leard said, who led the Tigers to the SEC Championship game two years later as a senior. “You give everything you have and that’s what you get in return. But it’s only going to make him stronger.

“He’s going to be remembered for how he bounces back from this experience. And that’s the biggest thing, is how you respond.”

Todd says he knows that adversity comes with the territory.

“You’ve just got to deal with that and make sure it doesn’t affect you when you come back out,” he said. “You’ve got to be able to control that.”

And Franklin’s confident that his starter will be able to in the future.

“He didn’t handle it as well as he could have, and he’ll handle it better,” Franklin said. “He’s a tough kid. He’ll overcome it. He’ll come back the next time it happens, cause it’ll happen again. It’s going to happen until he puts together great consecutive drives and we score a bunch of points and everybody thinks he’s good.”