Auburn Safety Leaves Program in Second Season With Tigers

While the Auburn defense won the day in its first game of the season against Baylor, the program lost a depth piece to its secondary entering the week of its home opener.

Safety Jacoby Mathews is no longer with the program, according to multiple sources close to the situation. On3’s Bryan Matthews had the initial report on Monday evening, with Mathews leaving the program after beginning his second season struggling to make the depth chart.

After beginning his collegiate career with Texas A&M in 2022, playing in over 10 games in both his freshman and sophomore seasons, Mathews went to the Plains after leaving the Aggies in 2023. He was not on either team in 2024 before head coach Hugh Freeze took a chance on him ahead of 2025.

But Mathews didn’t see the field often. The Ponchatula, Louisiana, native only featured in one game for Auburn last season, when the Tigers mauled Mercer at the end of November ahead of their Iron Bowl matchup with Alabama. Mathews didn’t record a statistic in the game.

Unless he heads to a lower-tier program, Mathews will finish his collegiate career with stats only from his first two seasons with Texas A&M. He finished his time as an Aggie with 66 total tackles, seven pass breakups and an interception.

In his time on the Plains, he was not in the secondary rotation at all coming out of fall camp, struggling to meet the expectations of defensive coordinator DJ Durkin. Auburn’s safety room was one of the program’s deepest rooms. Leading the charge are safety Champ Anthony and sophomore Eric Winters, who had the game-winning tackle in the win over Baylor last weekend.

Junior Kaleb Harris, senior Sylvester Smith-Reed and sophomore Newboy Fegans were also named, who were competing for a starting role, making Mathews’s path to being a starter quite difficult entering 2026.

Freeze recruited the former Aggie to the Plains due to the raw talent he had back in high school. Mathews was a former five-star recruit out of the 2022 class, according to Rivals. He was the No. 2 safety in the class and the best player from the state of Louisiana. He chose the Aggies over LSU, Florida and Texas, among others.

Although Auburn should be still dominant in the secondary with its depth, there’s one less piece to help out with the defense for the remainder of 2026.

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