Jackson Arnold finds himself right at the center of all the doubts surrounding the Auburn Tigers' success in the 2025 season. He will be the driving force that makes or breaks the games for Hugh Freeze's squad this season, which explains the mounting pressure on him to fix his turnover-proneness.
Arnold being a bust for his former team Oklahoma Sooners just makes the questions worse for him. His head coach revealing that they're planning to go easy on the QB in the training camp adds more to that.
Which is why Auburn's QB coach, Kent Austin, was crystal clear on how he planned on training Arnold amid all the noise.
"I treated him like any other quarterback," Austin said Monday in the 2025 preseason camp presser.
His expectations for him echoed what he sees Arnold as: a QB he has to train.
"You know, you come in here, we're going to prepare you to play and we expect you to, when you go on the field, to be the most prepared player on the field and to carry yourself that way, right? To have a confident humility that is demonstrable to the players around you, right? And can influence them in a way to pull the best out of them as well," Austin said.
Just the standard qualities for a player who leads the squad. Or more precisely, lead a losing squad to be a winning squad.
Whatever work Austin has been doing with the QB seems to be helping the QB make some progress, as Arnold confessed to needing to fix some of his shortcomings to the media recently.
“Whether that’s intermediate game or quick game, even deep routes -- just working on my timing and kinda getting my feet on the ground and ready to rip the ball," Arnold said.
Both Arnold and Austin still have a long way to go in addressing the QB's concerning issues still. The real question is how much progress they can make before the season starts.