Auburn coach Hugh Freeze slams visor into ground after Jackson Arnold mistake

Auburn head coach Hugh Freeze has repeatedly found himself on the wrong side of headlines throughout the offseason. That included several less-than-encouraging stories involving his dedication to improving his personal golf game while the Tigers’ recruiting efforts seemingly fell behind his SEC peers.

Now, with two weeks before the start of the 2025 college football season, Freeze’s efforts on the practice field are making the social media rounds after a since-deleted video from Thursday afternoon’s practice. The video, screen-recorded and shared by @MyTakes101, was originally posted by Auburn Plainsman journalist Gunner Norene and showed the third-year Tigers coach slamming his visor in disgust and scolding new Auburn quarterback Jackson Arnold for failing to throw a pass during a red-zone passing drill.

When asked about the incident following Thursday’s practice, Freeze acknowledged he might need to “calm down sometimes with quarterbacks, according to AuburnSports’ Justin Hokanson.

“When we have the right thing called, the expectation, and I think it’s a reasonable one, is we execute it,” Freeze said, per Hokanson. “Now, if we haven’t coached it well enough when we get in there, maybe that’s the case. I’ll ask the quarterback staff, ‘What did we tell him?’ because we’ve got him wide open and we don’t throw the touchdown and that’s frustrating as heck. It’s hard enough to score in this league and in any game really, but when you finally have one that’s called right, you want to see us execute it. And that’s the frustration.”

Josh Pate: ‘It’s been a very mixed bag’ from Auburn QB Jackson Arnold in fall camp

Jackson is expected to be Auburn’s starting quarterback this upcoming season after transferring in from Oklahoma as the Tigers’ prized member of the nation’s No. 2 transfer class, accoridng to the On3 | Rivals Team Transfer Portal Rankings. Jackson is a former Five-Star Plus+ recruit in the 2023 class, according to the Rivals Industry Rankings, but struggled during limited opportunties in 2024, when he threw for 1,421 yards and 12 touchdowns to three interceptions on 62.6-percent passing last season in Norman.

College football expert Josh Pate recently described Jackson’s preseason play as “a very mixed bag” during last Sunday night’s debut of “Josh Pate’s College Football Show” on YouTube.

“It’s tough trying to wade through all the rumors about how Jackson Arnold has looked in fall camp so far. I’ll tell you how he’s looked. It has been a very mixed bag. That’s how Jackson Arnold has looked in fall camp so far,” Pate said. “That shouldn’t be a shock. It shouldn’t be breaking news. In fact, it should be breaking news if he was either totally terrible or totally great so far.”