AUBURN, Ala. — Wide receiver DeAngelo Benton sat out of Auburn’s practice Thursday, his right hand in a plaster cast and arm in a sling after jamming his fingers a day earlier.

“I don’t know how long he’s going to be out,” said Auburn head coach Gene Chizik, who didn’t go into specifics of the injury.

Benton, a 6-foot-2, 201-pound sophomore, had a temporary cast on his hand Wednesday night but switched to a more permanent one Thursday, with the pinky and ring fingers on his right hand immobilized.

“He jammed it with a football,” wide receivers coach Trooper Taylor said. “It’s going to happen. You’ve got a guy like Cam (Newton) throwing you the ball, good luck to you. That’s why we crank the JUGS machine up.”

Benton caught only six passes for 88 yards last year but was expected to be one of the leading contenders to get more playing time this year.

His timetable to return is uncertain. Taylor, for one, isn’t going to wait around for him to heal up.

“We don’t have time for that,” Taylor said. “Like I told him, it’s not personal, but we’re not going to wait around. They’re not going to cancel the season. He feels the pressure from me. You’ve got 10 fingers. How many do you need to catch a ball? Get ready to go. I don’t have time for the injuries. I have time to coach the guys that are in there.”

Here are some other notes and quotes from Thursday:

• When the quarterbacks took the field Thursday, there was an unfamiliar player wearing an orange non-contact jersey — freshman Ryan White. The 5-foot-10, 186-pound White, who was expected to play defensive back, will get his shot at quarterback, something the coaches promised when he signed. “That’s where my heart is,” said White, who played quarterback at Lincoln High in Tallahassee, Fla. “I’ve been playing it my whole life. To change over from something you’ve been doing your whole life would be hard."

• White worked alongside Newton and Barrett Trotter during a few quarterback drills Thursday, getting some one-on-one instruction from offensive coordinator Gus Malzahn during a different period when the others worked on pooch punts. “We’re going to give him a shot,” Malzahn said. “He’s a good athlete and we’ll see what happens.”
  

• White said he still talks to cornerbacks coach Phillip Lolley and could fit in as a defensive back. “We’re all on the same page with that,” said Chizik, who said the Wildcat is a possibility for the freshman.
  

• Malzahn said Newton is getting the No. 1 reps right now. "We're on a time frame, we've got to prepare him in a short amount of time," Malzahn said. "We're giving him quite a bit of reps."

• Sophomore offensive lineman John Sullen is looking mean and lean at 305 pounds, down from 357 when he first reported last summer. "That kid, if you go back a year ago now, he's probably 40 to 45 pounds heavier than he is now," Chizik said. "Coach Yox does a great job with our strength program in really curtailing people's diets and added in with weight training, he's able to do that with a lot of guys. They've got to want to do it. And he did. That does say a lot about John's commitment to what he wants to do here."

• Chizik said Sullen's weight loss means he could play inside or outside. The sophomore already has worked some at right tackle.

• Both receivers Travante Stallworth and Philip Pierre-Louis appear to be at full speed coming off ACL injuries. Stallworth injured himself last fall; Pierre-Louis last spring. Both are wearing knee braces.

• Trooper, as usual, was a treasure trove of quotes. He basically went through the receivers (bullet points within bullet points!):

• On freshman Trovon Reed (pictured, right): "It don't take long. Ray Charles can figure out the kid is blessed with a lot of ability and a lot of want-to."

• On Stallworth: "I nicknamed him squeaky because every time he walks around I can hear that knee brace squeaking. I'm going to get him some WD-40 to put on that thing or something. But if you had 20 of those guys, you wouldn't lose a game. Because his heart is so big, he doesn't miss."

• On PPL: "He's setting a record for rehab on an ACL. I don't know if you know anybody who's ever come back faster than if Philip has. ... For me, he's really shown that he wants to be here and has done things right, because we set a standard and I didn't know if he could live up to it when he first started. If you had asked me last year, could he live up to that standard, if I was a betting man, I would have lost, because I would have said no."

• On 6-foot-3, 217-pound freshman Shaun Kitchens: "We've got us a fade guy now. We've got a guy when we get down on the goal line, we can go to and he can go up and get the thing. He is physical and he's a guy that, fundamentally, he's got a ways to go, but as far as eyes and hands and going up after the football, he has no fear."

• Defensive line coach Tracy Rocker also ventured down to the interview room. He ran through a bunch of players too:

• On freshmen DTs Jeffrey Whitaker (pictured at the top) and Kenneth Carter: "I feel like they’re going to have to help us. There’s no choice. That’s the reason they chose to come here. They have approached practice in a very positive manner. All I ask is, just go full speed, as far as you can, and I’ll correct you. ... They’re going as hard as they can. And you can tell, every now and then they hit that stumbling block, and they revert back to that high school process, and you have to remind them, it’s a different deal, you have to do it every snap."

• On junior college transfer Joel Bonomolo, who just arrived last week: "Joel is in great condition. He’s a workout maniac. He came in, he’s in great shape. It’s just a matter of understanding our terminology, communication process, the whole picture of what we’re doing defensively."

• On the importance of do-all lineman Zach Clayton: "Zach is going to be a key cog to this whole deal if he can stay healthy. That’s all we worry about it. He’s doing well. He’s always done well. It’s just a matter of keeping him healthy. We all got our fingers crossed. We put rabbit foots in his locker, chicken legs, all that stuff."

• Running backs coach Curtis Luper also stopped by. Why not keep the same format:

• On how much Onterio McCalebb's weight gain will help him: "Immensely. In this league, where obviously most of the running backs are around 220, and he played most of last year under 170. So it's still a work in progress, but he's up to 180 and he'll be better."

• On if he's ever had a 290-pound running back like Ladarious Phillips: "No. I think 250 is the biggest I've ever had. 290 — that's different, but I think we'll find a way to have some advantages at that position with him back there. He's 290 and he can stand flat-footed and do a backflip. And he can dunk a basketball and he's athletic. And you just can't pass on a young man who's 45 minutes away (in Roanoke, Ala.), he's 285-90 pounds and he's that athletic."

• On 5-star freshman Michael Dyer (pictured, right): "Mike is sharp, he's smart, he wants to do well, he's eager to learn and when you add that to the fact that he's just naturally talented, then we're headed in the right direction."

• Chizik said the team will wear shoulder pads and helmets Friday and transition to more contact.

• Auburn moved its practice back to 8 p.m. ET tomorrow, hoping to avoid the heat.