The Auburn Tigers have been decimated in the transfer portal. Every top name Hugh Freeze brought in for the offense is gone. Even worse, several elite defenders who broke out under defensive coordinator DJ Durkin are gone.
Cam Coleman, the crown jewel of Auburn's recent recruiting, will now be Texas Longhorns quarterback Arch Manning's top threat in Austin. His WR1A, who never got to truly show his talents on the Plains, Eric Singleton Jr., is reuniting with his former Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets offensive coordinator, Buster Faulkner, on the Florida Gators. Horatio Fields, a wideout/slot hybrid who took a redshirt and bailed after four games, and linebacker Robert Woodyard Jr., who had 67 tackles and two sacks, a much more impactful loss, will be Missouri Tigers.
Then, there's the Ole Miss Rebels, who, with Pete Golding in the head coaching seat and John David Baker as offensive coordinator, poached quarterback Deuce Knight and cornerback Jay Crawford. Portal violence on both sides of the ball from Oxford, Mississippi.
Many of these players left after the implementation of a new system that isn't as tailored to the NFL under Alex Golesh and Joel Gordon's new regime. Certainly, other reasons led to this drastic turnover, too.
Alex Golesh tearing Auburn down and using transfer portal to rebuild
The poral giveth, just as it took. Golesh didn't want to pay Hugh Freeze-era players whose name value outweighed their performance. He wanted to unpack all of the dysfunction Freeze allowed in his locker room and eradicate it.
Golesh brought on skill-position guys from his 2025 USF Bulls squad, including quarterbacks Byrum Brown and Locklan Hewlett, receivers Jeremiah Kroger and KeShaun Singleton, running back Nykahi Davenport, and cornerback Gavin Jenkins. He's added transfers from the Power 4 in the trenches, though, with a few G5 guys sprinkled in. AU's portal class is hovering around the top 10 this cycle. Though there have been losses, there have also been gains.
Culture resets are rarely painless. This one is particularly painful because Tiger fans tied their hopes to the success Freeze had on the recruiting trail. Having to put faith into the unknown -- though Golesh was a top OC with the Tennessee Volunteers, this is his first SEC head coaching gig -- is tough.
Things couldn't go on as they had been, though. Change needed to happen.
We'll see how long it takes before that's said again in the Loveliest Village during the Golesh era. If it ever is.