Hugh Freeze admits offensive performance is 'unacceptable', but in denial as to the cause of Auburn Tigers' failures

The Auburn Tigers offense played in utterly unacceptable fashion on Saturday in their embarrassing loss to the Texas A&M Aggies. It was a tough opponent, so some struggle is expected, but converting zero third downs, averaging three yards per play, taking another five sacks, and committing another ten penalties just isn't going to cut it against anyone.

Hugh Freeze had no problem admitting that the offense was unacceptable following the game, but seems to be in denial as to the actual cause.

Hugh Freeze takes blame, but everyone knows who the problem is

It's always nice to see head coaches take responsibility when things go poorly, because to an extent, leaders in charge are always responsible for outcomes regardless of mistakes made by those who report to them.

However, given Hugh Freeze's comments, it doesn't sound like he wants to admit that at the very core of the issues this year, he simply has a quarterback problem:

"Offensively that was unacceptable. Our defense played their tails off well enough to win the game. We have two weeks to prepare for Georgia. We will take that time to re-evaluate everything related to our offense. How we prepare, personnel, everything. This isn't on Jackson [Arnold] or any other player. It's on our staff and that starts with me to fix it. It was just unacceptable today, the way we played."

Coach Freeze is absolutely right about the defense playing well enough to win. They held A&M to 16 points on the day despite losing the time of possession and total plays battle by quite a lot. The defense racked up several sacks on Aggies QB Marcel Reed. They limited him to -23 rushing yards on the game. They snagged the game-flipping interception that set up the only touchdown of the game for Auburn. The defense was phenomenal.

The offense? An absolute joke yet again.

It's at least promising that Hugh Freeze sounds open to re-evaluating personnel problems, but then immediately corrected himself by saying "this isn't on Jackson [Arnold]", which just isn't true. Most everything going wrong on the offense to an extent is on Jackson Arnold.

He took five more sacks, nearly 20 more pass rush pressures, and just cannot for the life of him avoid or deal with the pressure properly. Arnold has thrown exactly zero touchdown passes under pressure this season. He's completing just 50% of his passes when facing pressure. And he's getting sacked on 36% of his pressures overall, which is nearly double FBS average. Jackson Arnold is the problem.

Hugh Freeze was given multiple opportunities in his presser following the game to throw some players under the bus, but again, as that's not typically what he likes to do, continued repeating himself. Admitting that things were unacceptable, but not addressing the "who" behind all the terrible play, really:

"There's no question we've got to re-evaluate everything. It was unacceptable. Again, it's not on the kids...We've got to evaluate personnel and make changes or figure out how to coach it better...[On third downs], I know I sound like a broken record, but it's unacceptable. We've got too good of skill players and quarterbacks and running backs. I think we're solid in the offensive line too, but we certainly are not playing like it. So, that falls on me and the staff to figure out why."

He almost admitted that the offensive line has been a real issue here, but really it's much more than that. Arnold is in many cases holding onto the ball too long, stepping into pressure, dropping his eyes early in the snap, and not trusting players around him. It's that mix of terrible attributes at quarterback that continue to lead Jackson Arnold and Auburn to failure.

Jackson Arnold did make a couple good plays in the game like his throw deep down the right sideline to Eric Singleton, but that was one of the truly rare instances where he simply trusted his playmakers. When he doesn't trust those around him or make the right pre-snap decision, that's what gets him in trouble. So, of course, it's no surprise that Jackson Arnold took another sack to end the game for the second week in a row.