Jackson Arnold is getting used to Las Vegas. Sin City is a far cry from Auburn, Alabama, or Norman, Oklahoma, after all. He doesn't get recognized when he's out to dinner, and his profile as a quarterback in town can fly under the radar with No. 1 pick Fernando Mendoza (who he met years ago at the Manning Passing Academy) debuting for the Raiders.
There was a time when Arnold looked like he could have been on that track as a dominant high school QB in Texas, but so far, his career is a far cry from the promise his five-star status suggested, derailed by multiple factors both inside and outside his control.
He arrived at UNLV in January looking for a second chance at a second chance with a Rebels program that, under head coach Dan Mullen, has a valid shot at the Group of Six's College Football Playoff bid in a Mountain West that has lost stalwart Boise State. In this edition of our 2026 bounce-back series, how is Arnold hoping to get back on track?
Arnold reunites with Corey Dennis
UNLV offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach Corey Dennis told Arnold he'd eventually coach him. Dennis remembers a teenager at Guyer High School near Dallas, one of the meccas of high school football. Arnold's team was facing off against powerhouse Allen back in 2021. His 307 passing yards and two touchdowns impressed Dennis, who was then at Ohio State. It proved Arnold could hang on a big stage. The Buckeyes offered days later, joining a list of national powers in pursuit of Arnold, like Notre Dame, LSU and Alabama. The young signal caller opted to go to Oklahoma, but Dennis had a message for him when he got the bad news.
"You can get mad at a kid for making the decision that they think is best for themselves, or you can wish a kid best and not burn any bridges," Dennis told CBS Sports. "And the joke was, hey, man, it might be at the Dallas Cowboys in the next 10 years, but who knows, I'm gonna find a way to coach you."
After one year backing up Dillon Gabriel with the Sooners, Arnold became the starter in an ill-fated 2024 season that was a disaster offensively for multiple reasons, including the complete decimation of Arnold's receiving corps due to injury and a revolving door at offensive line that featured eight starting fives in the first nine games. He was benched after three first-half turnovers against Tennessee in his first SEC game, then turned to again later in the season. A blowout upset over Alabama late in the season showed off his running ability, but the passing game never took flight, and even Brent Venables admitted at SEC Media Days last year that OU tried to keep Arnold and acknowledged his former QB in a near-impossible situation.
"I know this, without reservation, he's gonna play this game a long time at a really high level," Venables said. "Unfortunately for him, everything around him wasn't helping him be successful. He had no chance in some ways under the circumstances and dealt a really bad hand."
Arnold shuffled the deck and transferred to Auburn for 2025, where the hand looked better heading into the season with head coach Hugh Freeze saying his team had six NFL-ready offensive linemen and great receiving prospects to throw to in Eric Singleton and Cam Coleman. But as is common with Freeze's teams, chaos won out, and the coach was fired on Nov. 2. A training camp interaction where Freeze threw a visor and lit into Arnold for missing a would-be touchdown went viral before the season even started, and after Freeze was out at Auburn, he came under fire for placing blame on the quarterback for the demise of his tenure. The season also featured an unfortunate return to Norman, where he was sacked nine times, including on a safety on a late fourth down that effectively ended the game. It was clear to Arnold that new head coach Alex Golesh wanted his own QB, so he hit the portal again.
"I think the kid was a scapegoat for two regimes," Dennis said. "I don't understand how a kid could be one of the best high school players truly in the country and then all of a sudden, just like the kid just stinks? He doesn't know how to throw? That makes no sense."
A different portal experience
Arnold's first foray into the portal was not quite predestined, but he says it was pretty clear Auburn was where he'd end up. When he went through the process a second time, he was more willing to let the portal process play out and was open to different landing spots. Much to his surprise, Anthony Colandrea announced he was leaving UNLV around Christmas, and his second portal process took a turn.
Portal recruiting processes move fast, and have little of the wooing that goes on in the high school recruiting process. For all the bemoaning that recruiting relationships matter less in the rev-share era, they can still help in the portal process if a player wants to get closer to home or is looking for a comfortable landing spot, like Arnold, after a few rough years. Dennis built a relationship with Arnold for three years while he was a high schooler, and, along with Mullen's chief of staff, Lee Davis, who had been at OU with Arnold, those personal connections created a comfort that helped make UNLV the right spot for him. The Rebels had only one quarterback come in for a portal visit, and Arnold took only one visit. He showed up in Vegas looking to commit, and it was not purely a mercenary endeavor.
"I feel like I needed to be around people that I trusted and that I've had a previous relationship with, and you know, some dudes that I know you know want the best for me and in my career," Arnold said. "Coach Mullen's offense a little more pro style than I've been in, I feel like for the next level, and I feel like offense like that would help me out, help develop me more, and obviously you know Coach Mullen's got a pedigree with quarterbacks that he's coached, so that was a big part of it too, just seeing his development and who he's developed and the people he's been around, I think those are things that I was looking for."
Arnold doesn't come to UNLV as the clear QB1, with over a month to go before training camp. Former Michigan transfer Alex Orji remains in the QB room from last year and was the running complement to Colandrea until he suffered a season-ending knee and hamstring injury last September. The injury was still limiting Orji in the spring. Mullen is no stranger to playing two quarterbacks, having done it multiple times going back to his days as Florida's offensive coordinator. Orji and Colandrea were actually on the field together to start the 2025 season, a nod to how tight the race for the starting job was then.
Re-learning to cut it loose
Last year, Dennis and Mullen were trying to get Colandrea to rein it in. The former Virginia QB threw 11 interceptions the season before getting to UNLV. For Arnold, who has a proclivity to scramble himself into trouble, the advice is the opposite.
"It was funny, Coach Mullen wants me to actually in practice to stop scrambling to run. He wants me to start throwing up 50/50 balls or whatnot, things I probably wouldn't throw in-game, and he's like just do it now while you can and try to see how much you can get away with," Arnold said. "We'll do some QB run stuff, naturally, that is part of my game, so I think some of that stuff will get put in throughout the year, without a doubt, but I think his emphasis for me is developing as a passer and really reading out progressions in the pocket and getting better in the aspect of the game."
On Sept. 12, UNLV will play North Texas in Denton, and Arnold will get a chance to go home, 15 minutes from where Dennis first saw him star. With friends and family in attendance, a freer version of the player might just re-emerge, hopefully unburdened from the adversity that has so far defined his career.
"I just remember a kid from high school that freaking ripped it, and trust every throw, and now it's like, no, you can make these throws, make the throw, and so it's kind of cool to see and do, and you know, every kid has different stories as they go through it," Dennis said.
