Jackson Arnold, take two.
Once viewed as the quarterback who would put Oklahoma back among the national elite, the former five-star signee is now at Auburn trying to do the same for a Tigers program that has suffered four consecutive losing seasons. Arnold is hoping this second chance is not a last hurrah, or else it could be the last hurrah for Auburn third-year coach Hugh Freeze.
“There is some pressure for sure,” Arnold said last week at the Southeastern Conference’s annual media days event in Atlanta, “but I have a whole year of college football under my belt, and in the SEC at that. You’re not playing slouches every week, and I feel like all the adversity I went through last year really built me up for this moment and this year.
“For whatever reason, I just didn’t play well. Things happen for a reason, and I’m just super excited to get a fresh start at a new place that has some excitement around it.”
Arnold, a 6-foot-1, 219-pound junior from Denton, Texas, is the son of former Ringgold High School and Wofford College running back Todd Arnold. He was the Gatorade national player of the year at Guyer High School and played in seven games as a Sooners freshman, including a start in the 2023 Alamo Bowl against Arizona after Dillon Gabriel had revealed he was entering the transfer portal.
In that bowl game, Arnold threw for 361 yards and led Oklahoma to 562 yards, but the Sooners lost 38-24.
“I was crazy about Jackson out of high school, as was everybody else,” Freeze said. “The guy was a five-star Gatorade player of the year, and he exhibited exactly the things I look for to run the type of offense I want to run. He’s natural at extending a play or throwing an RPO (run-pass option) like we want him to do.
“Then you have to say: ‘What happened? Why the lack of success?’ You have to study that, and you find out that they had a ton of injuries that I think really affected the play around Jackson.”
Arnold’s sophomore season started strong, as he led the Sooners in rushing and passing through the first three games. He threw four touchdown passes in the 51-3 opening shredding of Temple and rushed 14 times for 97 yards in the third game against Tulane, but he was ineffective in the fourth contest — a 25-15 home loss to Tennessee — and was replaced by Michael Hawkins Jr.
Hawkins would make three straight starts before Arnold reclaimed the job and helped Oklahoma to its biggest win of the season, a 24-3 stunning of Alabama, but he would throw for only 1,421 yards in his 10 total appearances.
“I think last season rattled his confidence, and he just needed a confidence rebuild and reset,” Freeze said. “I think our receivers helped him feel confident throughout spring practice, and he knows that our staff believes in him.”
Auburn has a talented receiver corps headed by sophomore Cam Coleman and junior Eric Singleton, a coveted transfer from Georgia Tech, but the status of another sophomore standout, Malcolm Simmons, is in question following his recent arrest on a domestic assault charge.
“It’s like a whole bunch of unicorns in that room,” Arnold said. “They’re one of a kind. They really are. There is Eric and Cam and Malcolm and Horatio (Fields) — I could go right on down the list. We’ve got dudes who can absolutely stretch the field, and on top of that, they can run fantastic routes.
“I feel like throwing to Eric Singleton is like throwing to routes on air, because he’s there every time.”
Arnold will be put to an immediate test when the Tigers open Aug. 29 at Baylor, a Big 12 member that went 8-4 last season before losing the Texas Bowl to LSU. Auburn will open SEC play Sept. 20 at Oklahoma, with Jackson saying of that encounter: “There is no animosity from me whatsoever, and I think it’s going to be a fun environment. I really enjoy going to play in that stadium.”
Should Arnold scuffle for a second straight season, Freeze could turn to Stanford transfer Ashton Daniels or five-star freshman Deuce Knight, but the plan is to ride Arnold to Auburn’s first winning season since 2020.
“The thing we keep harping on with Jackson is that you don’t have to do something special,” Freeze said. “We’ve won 10 games at every place I’ve ever been in a given year, whether it was Lambuth, Arkansas State, Ole Miss or Liberty, and those years were when the quarterback played within the system. We’ve got to take shots to Cam Coleman, but when we call it, just because it’s Cam Coleman, don’t force it.
“He needs to live for the next one sometimes and just do what we do. He doesn’t have to get greedy.”
Contact David Paschall at dpaschall@timesfreepress.com.