Auburn Tigers survive critical incompetence in two key areas as Hugh Freeze and Jackson Arnold find a way against Baylor
The Auburn Tigers and head coach Hugh Freeze kicked off their 2025 college football season with a 38-24 victory over the Baylor Bears, but it didn’t come easy.Jackson Arnold struggled early passing the ball, but found his feet (in more ways than one) and ultimately destroyed the Baylor defense with his dual threat abilities. Arnold […]
The Auburn Tigers and head coach Hugh Freeze kicked off their 2025 college football season with a 38-24 victory over the Baylor Bears, but it didn’t come easy.
Jackson Arnold struggled early passing the ball, but found his feet (in more ways than one) and ultimately destroyed the Baylor defense with his dual threat abilities. Arnold finished the game adding 137 rushing yards and two touchdowns to his meager 108 passing yards, which was more than enough to get the job done. However, unlike the preseason worries, it wasn’t Jackson Arnold or his play that nearly cost Auburn against Baylor.
The Tigers will have to clean up two key areas of critical incompetence if they want to continue their momentum of success, especially by the time they enter SEC play.
Auburn Tigers penalties almost cost them the game against Baylor
Hugh Freeze mentioned the defense coming out a bit sluggish to start the game–and we’ll get to that in just a bit–but the real big issue that allowed this game to even be close were all the dumb penalties Auburn committed. The Tigers committed a total of nine penalties for 83 yards on the game, a few of which came at extremely bad times.
Early on in the game it was an offensive issue, as Xavier Chaplin and Mason Murphy logged back to back false starts, followed by an illegal formation later in the game. However, the offense wasn’t really the issue. The defensive secondary were the worst offenders.
As the end of the first half neared, defensive back Rayshawn Pleasant was called for defensive holding on a crucial 4th & 3 that extended the drive for Baylor–although he totally redeemed himself with the return touchdown later. The Bears didn’t ultimately score on that drive, but that could have been costly.
Early in the 3rd quarter, Kaylin Lee’s pass interference on 3rd & 2 set up a touchdown almost immediately after that mistake, allowing the game to get back within a score (24-17 at the time). Then again in the fourth quarter, Jay Crawford’s defensive holding penalty set up another touchdown pass by Sawyer Robertson to bring the game within a score (31-24 at that point).
Finally, as the game should have easily been in hand (38-24 with less than four minutes to go), Jahquez Robinson grabbed all over Baylor tight end Michael Trigg to pull a pass interference call. Luckily for Auburn, the Baylor offensive line followed that up with another penalty and then a dropped touchdown in the end zone shortly thereafter, but that could have cost the Tigers too.
Those were just the bad penalties that the referees actually called on Auburn’s defense. The Tigers should have been flagged for several more, including what was one of the worst no-calls on a clear face mask penalty that you can see in the post below. Auburn must get these simple penalty problems cleaned up, and quickly.
Auburn’s pass defense will get absolutely exposed in SEC play if they don’t fix their secondary issues
The penalties were one huge issue, but really just a symptom of the greater problem: the horrid pass defense.
Sawyer Robertson started off a little slow to open the first half, and due to some drops by his receivers was barely completing half his passes for much of the game. However, Auburn’s inability to quickly react to screen plays and getting beat in a handful of man coverage looks exposed some problems with their secondary.
Baylor totaled 419 passing yards, three passing touchdowns, and Robertson averaged nearly nine yards per pass attempt on the game. The Bears saw three different receivers clear 70 yards. Two of those skill players snagged at least seven receptions for 99 yards.
If it wasn’t a speedster like Kole Wilson or Ashtyn Wilson it was the size mismatch at tight end Michael Trigg. It really didn’t matter the target, Auburn struggled to cover and tackle even when proper coverage was there.
Auburn must improve on their tackling in coverage, pursuit on underneath routes, and simply cannot get caught out of position leverage-wise as they did throughout the night against Baylor. When they face off against much more talented wide receiver groups in the SEC the Tigers will struggle even more if they can’t get that fixed.
There’s still plenty of time to get the defense right as the Tigers face off against Ball State and South Alabama in the coming weeks before traveling to Norman to play Oklahoma. Hugh Freeze and his staff just need to find the few necessary changes to make that will help improve discipline and consistency overall on the back end.
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