In the college football world of NIL, the risk is there that you are going to get a lemon, not a Lamborghini.
That’s been the case for Auburn over the past few seasons, as highly paid players have come and gone without proving they deserved that money. Unfortunately for the Tigers, the problem has mostly consisted on offense, especially at the most important position: quarterback.
Here are three of the worst NIL mistakes that the Tigers have committed in the past few years.
Payton Thorne
It wasn’t that Thorne didn’t have the pedigree coming in. He did, after all, throw for 3,232 yards and 27 touchdowns for Michigan State in 2021. It’s that after seeing the offense struggle in his first season on the Plains, Hugh Freeze doubled down on Thorne and brought him back for another year.
It proved to be a major mistake as Thorne and Freeze never could get on the same path, with things coming to a he-said/he-said moment at Georgia when the quarterback ran a play that the head coach wasn’t thrilled with on fourth down. The connection between the two seemed frayed, and when you ask who was the quarterback for Auburn during Freeze’s first two seasons at Auburn 20 years from now, you won’t find many people who will be able to come up with Thorne’s name.
Jackson Arnold
Everything looked great when Arnold led Auburn to a season-opening victory at Baylor to begin the 2025 season, but things would only go downhill from there. Not exactly a precise downfield passer, Arnold and the Tigers’ offense were woeful for most of the season until he was finally benched after a bad first half against Arkansas.
The lack of production by Arnold (and Auburn’s offense) was the final nail in Freeze’s coffin, as he was fired after an embarrassing 10-3 loss to a bad Kentucky team.
Xavier Chaplin
Auburn fans have been waiting for a solid left tackle for some time. They certainly did not find it from Chaplin, the Virginia Tech transfer. If anything, it was a lack of research on the lineman that proved to be the problem, as it was finally announced in October that he suffered from a diagnosed hearing issue.
Those false starts that Chaplin continued to make, no matter whether on the road or in the friendly confines of Jordan-Hare Stadium, suddenly made all the sense in the world.
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