Auburn falls to Oklahoma 24 to 17

September 20, 2025 – The Auburn football team opened SEC play against Oklahoma and received the Tigers' first loss of the season in a game that was marred by questionable officiating.

Auburn appeared to be off to an early lead after the Tigers returned a fumble for a touchdown, but that was overturned by the officiating crew taking six points off the board..

“I don’t know how it’s not a fumble. Maybe they had a different review upstairs. Looked like he juggled at first, regained, and ran. We stripped it. Thought it should have been a touchdown," said Auburn head Coach Hugh Freeze.

Oklahoma's first touchdown came off a trick play where the receiver pretended to go out of the game, but then suddenly turned up field and got the pass for the TD. Many observers believe that the officials should have called illegal procedure on that play and disallowed that touchdown. Despite this Auburn still had a one-point lead in the fourth quarter when an Oklahoma receiver got a deep pass inside the ten that appeared to be out of bounds. The officiating crew however ruled the receiver inbounds setting up Oklahoma's go ahead score to win the game.

The offensive line for Auburn played an absolutely horrible game. The offensive line gave up an incredible ten sacks and twelve tackles for loss while only being able to rush for 67 yards. That ten sacks given up was the worst offensive line performance in the history of the school. The situation was made worse by Auburn Quarterback Jackson Arnold holding on to the ball too long thus taking very avoidable sacks. Oklahoma just had 7 total sacks coming into this game. Auburn will not win many SEC games if the line play continues to play this poorly upfront.

Arnold did have 220 yards passing on the day.

The Auburn defense kept them in the game. The Tigers defense held Oklahoma to just 32 yards of rushing and got stop after stop ending Oklahoma drives. The Oklahoma go ahead drive in the fourth quarter being the only drive where Auburn's defense broke.

Oklahoma Quarterback John Mateer had 24 completions on 36 attempts for 271 yards passing. He threw on touchdown pass and 29 rushing yards, including a rushing touchdown.

Following the go ahead OU score, Auburn got the ball back with a chance to drive the length of the field and go ahead. Instead Auburn went backwards with that drive ending with Arnold being sacked in the end zone for a safety. Auburn attempted an onside kick on the punt following the safety. The Auburn player grabbed the ball, but before it had gone the required nine yards thus OU got possession and the opportunity to run out the clock.

Oklahoma improves to 4–0 overall and 1–0 in the SEC. Auburn fall to 3–1 and 0–1 in the SEC.

For Auburn Coach Hugh Freeze this is his third year with the team.

"Tough. Tough, tough. That's a really dang good football team, particularly defensively," said Freeze after the game. "You just can't... we had 13 penalties. You're just not going to win on the road in this league when you do that."

Auburn plays Texas A&M next week in College Station.

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