Heading into the 2025 season, Auburn Tigers football head coach Hugh Freeze is feeling the pressure. It will be his third season on the Plains, and he still has yet to produce a team with a winning record at the end of the year.
This will be his first year coaching an Auburn football team without Payton Thorne at the quarterback position, however, and with the addition of another top 10 recruiting class and a strong transfer portal haul, hopes are high that this year will be different.
Freeze and his staff had to replace not only Payton Thorne but every other quarterback that was in the room last season. They brought in former Oklahoma QB Jackson Arnold and former Stanford QB Ashton Daniels to complement true freshman Deuce Knight. While Arnold has been named QB1 already, Freeze has said he is pleased with how both Arnold and Knight performed throughout the spring, and that he expects a healthy level of competition in the position group.
He went even further, sending a strong statement about the Auburn football quarterback room heading into the 2025 season.
"I would put our quarterback room up against any in the SEC," Freeze said during a chat with a few reporters last week before Jimmy Rane's charity scholarship banquet in Montgomery, per Auburn Undercover. "I would say between Jackson and Deuce and Ashton, I would say that's three pretty good dudes. Deuce hasn't done anything yet, but the other two were highly recruited (in the portal)."
Daniels, Arnold, and Knight will be the only scholarship quarterbacks this year, a departure from Freeze's usual insistence on having four.
"Until we do something, what I say doesn't really matter," Freeze said. "But I do feel comfortable with those three guys."
The Tigers return to action against the Baylor Bears on August 29.