Auburn's Jackson Arnold, formerly of Oklahoma, and Tennessee football transfer Nico Iamaleava, now a UCLA Bruin, both lean on the checkdown to an unsettling degree. Unfortunately, they both had an inefficient year from an air-yard perspective in 2024.
Saturday Down South's Spenser Davis relayed the mutual issue both had: dead-end throw rate.
"This is something I introduced in a piece discussing why Tennessee should walk away from Nico Iamaleava. It’s rather simple: dead-end throw rate measures how often a QB either throws an incomplete pass or has a completion of 4 yards or less. Dead-end throw rate correlates very well with passer efficiency rating despite not accounting for yards, touchdowns or interceptions," Davis wrote.
"Arnold, unsurprisingly, had a rather poor dead-end throw rate of 56.1% at Oklahoma last season. The P5 average since 2015 is right around 50%, so his season was about 6 points worse than the average. Arnold ranks 446th out of 504 qualified QB seasons over that span. Only 2 quarterbacks who met the criteria were worse in 2024 (Wisconsin’s Braedyn Locke and Northwestern’s Jack Lausch)."
Tigers head football coach Hugh Freeze, OC Derrick Nix, QB coach Kent Austin must scheme around Jackson Arnold's weaknesses
Arnold's numbers aren't news to Tigers head football coach Hugh Freeze, offensive coordinator Derrick Nix, and QB coach Kent Austin. They knew what they were spending big money -- not quite his $2 million NIL valuation but definitely seven figures regardless -- on when they nabbed the ex-Sooners signal-caller.
Auburn's coaching staff is betting on themselves. This is a make-or-break season for this regime and Freeze cannot afford losses for his own narrative's sake.
Even if Freeze makes it to 2026, it'd be hard to see much hope for his Plains tenure if 2025 isn't a significant improvement on the last two seasons.