First-year Auburn Tigers head coach Alex Golesh is caught somewhere between a rebuild and a win-now situation this coming fall. Nobody realistically should expect an offensive line that's been nearly completely recast to come together to give Auburn a realistic enough chance to win in the SEC. At least that's what pundits and common sense suggest.
It's College Football, though. "Common sense" thinking in the preseason is often wrong months into the season.
And again, if the offensive line is the only issue, and make no mistake, that could be worked on between now and September when the Tigers and Baylor Bears meet in Week 1 in Atlanta, then maybe Golesh's team is more "win-now" than "trust the process."
As 247Sports' Nathan King suggests, the Oklahoma Sooners and Vanderbilt Commodores' recent success in bringing on quarterbacks and the play-callers they played for in lower conferences could be replicable with Byrum Brown, not to mention five of his receivers and a tight end he played with on the USF Bulls, and his play-caller, Joel Gordon.
King positioned Curt Cignetti's Indiana Hoosiers' two-year instant-rebuild into a CFP team in year one, and then a 16-0 national champion in year two, as a more pie-in-the-sky, though not impossible, goal for Golesh and Co.
"(Importing transfers from your old team) is the blueprint in modern college football, and they all want what Cignetti had: a fast pass to smooth over the clunky stages of building a program ... Of course, it's not all about personnel. Cignetti has proven himself to be a tremendous head coach. For Auburn, Golesh and company hope having a quarterback heading into his fourth year as a starter in the same system can make for an immediately competent offense," King wrote.
"There are some very recent SEC examples of that. Diego Pavia's head coach and offensive coordinator at New Mexico State both went to Vanderbilt, and Pavia became a Heisman finalist there. Oklahoma hired Washington State OC Ben Arbuckle last offseason, and it was obvious that his star transfer quarterback, John Mateer, would follow him and play for the Sooners. Mateer was not stellar last season, but Oklahoma did make the College Football Playoff."
Can Brown match Diego Pavia's production in Nashville over two years, or an injured John Mateer's production in Norman last year, during his only year on the Plains? That could be a defining question in Lee County, Alabama. Of course, it takes both sides of the ball to make it work. Pavia's first Commodores squad went 6-6 when he wasn't a Heisman candidate.
Matching Vanderbilt's defensive production from either season shouldn't be hard. DJ Durkin will have taken a massive step back if his Tigers slipped to 2025 Commodores defensive levels (No. 117 in EPA-per-play, No. 134 in passing defense). Even 2024 Vanderbilt production would be unacceptable for Durkin and Co. 2025 Oklahoma's defense, which ranked No. 6 in total defense and No. 7 in scoring defense, is the goal. While Auburn lost plenty of defensive talent to the draft and the portal, next-man-up studs like EDGE Jared Smith and key returners like LBs Xavier Atkins and Elijah Melendez and safety Kaleb Harris should be able to maintain a high level of play.
A Heisman-caliber year from Brown should thus put the 2026 Tigers on a comparable path to Pavia's 'Dores last season. And to boot, it's unclear if there will be as many worthy teams in the 2026/2027 CFP field as there were last December. 10-2 probably gets Auburn into the field with a schedule that includes the LSU Tigers, Georgia Bulldogs, Ole Miss Rebels, and the Alabama Crimson Tide.
Tough ask, I know. But it's not as though those in the locker room believe that it's an impossible one.
Byrum Brown and teammates have Indiana-esque expectations for Auburn in 2026
Brown has something that may serve him very well in 2026: supreme confidence. Fernando Mendoza had it in spades when he arrived in Bloomington after three years with the Cal Golden Bears. Brown is not expecting any less than what IU achieved last September through January. Neither are his teammates.
“This whole place, they care about football ... That is something that you truly want to be a part of. My teammates, they care about football, they were very excited once we got to work, bonding with them, connecting with them in the locker room, all them embracing us transfers. They were open arms, and like, ‘let’s go to work. Let’s win a Natty,'" Brown shared of AU's locker room.
There are blueprints laid out for the Tigers to follow that will have this team not just rebuilding, but fully built, quickly. It's on Golesh and Co. to inspire the kind of culture that yields those results, of course.
Every indication is that Golesh is doing it right thus far, though. We'll just have to see how it plays out on the field. Hopefully, at worst, it resembles OU's 2025 season, with Vandy's 2025 as a nice consolation prize.
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