When Alex Golesh was hired as Auburn’s new head football coach, I decided it should be a wait-and-see type of hire. He certainly wasn’t John Cohen’s first choice (or second), and while he achieved some good things at USF, bringing in a 41-year-old to take over a job in the SEC with little experience is always risky.
Golesh has yet to coach a game on the Plains. Heck, he has yet to hold a practice, but already, Auburn fans – this die-hard bunch salivating at the thought of the Tigers being contenders, or for some, just competent, again – might be questioning what exactly is going on in the football facility on the corner of Samford Avenue and Biggio Drive.
Each new coach has different challenges. For Hugh Freeze, it was rebuilding a depleted roster left barren by Bryan Harsin. For Golesh, it was making these top-ranked recruits turn signees into experienced players that the days of losing were over, and that his plan and vision were something they could buy into.
Just more than a month into his tenure, Golesh has provided more questions (and concerns) than answers.
It all came to a head over the last two days when Cam Coleman, one of the best receivers in college football, decided he was going to enter the transfer portal. On Tuesday, 5-star signee and the can’t-miss product, Deuce Knight, decided to follow what should have been his main connection into the portal. In less than 36 hours, the future of Auburn’s offense took a massive hit.
Granted, this doesn’t fall all on Golesh or his coaching staff. Where is the money that Cohen and those in the know in the athletic department? If they aren’t spending it on Coleman, a proven commodity, and Knight, who will almost certainly be a star, then who are they spending it on? And why, when teams are holding onto star players, are the Tigers losing theirs at an alarming rate?
If you look at what remains of the roster as of today, it looks more like an AAC team and less like a team ready to compete in the SEC. Malcolm Simmons is gone. So are Horatio Fields, Kayin Lee, Jay Crawford, Robert Woodyard and Malik Blocton. The list goes on of players who have made a difference for Auburn and would have been a huge part of the 2026 season.
What exactly is Alex Golesh's plan for Auburn to succeed?
Maybe Golesh looks at what Curt Cignetti has built at Indiana – a No. 1 ranking, Big 10 champions and back-to-back College Football Playoff appearances without one 5-star on the roster – and decided you don’t need the marquee talent to win nowadays. But here’s the problem with that: there’s only one Cignetti, and as good a coach that Golesh may be, he is not a Curt Cignetti.
And it’s not like Golesh came in and started ablaze on the recruiting trail. With almost as much time as Freeze had when hired in 2022, the new Auburn head coach put together a No. 34 recruiting class, good for 14th in the SEC and not exactly putting fear into the Georgias and Alabamas of the college football world.
As someone who has covered the Auburn football program closely for some time, I’ve never seen a pure amount of talent depart in one offseason. Sure, some of it was bound to happen with a regime change, but when you lose this many star players, there has to be something wrong, and it could very well be out of the hands of Golesh.
But hey, he knows the creed. He believes in work, hard work, and all the things mentioned at every introductory press conference when an Auburn coach is hired. Golesh is the next person who considers Auburn his dream job, and whose “resume and life experience lines up perfectly with the Auburn Creed. He has a spirit that’s not afraid.” That’s an actual quote.
That means absolutely nothing when you are losing top player after top player, and it means nothing when you step out on the field with a team that isn’t even close to being of SEC quality.
Things can still turn around. Maybe he surprises and leads Auburn to its first winning season since Gus Malzahn was in charge. Given this program's history, it wouldn’t shock me in the least. But for right now, Auburn is a rock going downhill quickly, gaining steam toward even lower seasons.
Something must change, or the Tigers will stay at their current status: as a once-powerful program now an afterthought that can’t get out of its own way. We will wait and see.