Alex Golesh Shares One Key Aspect Auburn Football Needs to Improve In

The Auburn Tigers have been hard at work during fall camp, and new head coach Alex Golesh is pulling out all of the stops to make sure that his team is ready for their season-opening kickoff in just over two weeks. However, the product on the Plains is still quite unfinished, and after a scrimmage on Wednesday, the new Tiger skipper shared his thoughts on one key aspect in which the Tigers need to step it up.

“We are not very good right now on both sides with truly recognizing situational football and the guys taking control of it,” Golesh said. “What I mean by that is just simply understanding where it is, rather than just playing the next play. Where are we? What is the situation? What are we trying to do? That takes time and that takes the play callers being on the same page with the guys.”

One of the most difficult parts of any rebuild–and, with the sheer number of transfers this year, it certainly is a rebuild on the Plains–is getting the players on the same page as the coaches and coordinators. With Auburn’s offense, the hope was that the transition would be something resembling a seamless transfer, as many of the Tigers’ offensive pieces played under current Auburn coaches last year at USF, but there are clearly still some speed bumps that need to be adjusted for.

“What I am not super happy with right now is just purely the situational football execution and even the recognition of it. A lot of that comes with being a young football team,” Golesh said. “We are super young in some key spots and so again, the emphasis on the next two days, I do believe the intent is getting close to right. I do believe the physicality is getting close to right.

So, the Tigers are trending in the right direction in terms of mentality and physicality, but there is still quite a bit of work that needs to go into this unit, especially due to the youth of some players, as well as the unfamiliarity with the system from other, more veteran transfers.

Golesh knew he faced a monumental task from the moment he first stepped onto the Plains as a head coach, and things seem to be progressing in the right direction, but more work clearly needs to be done over the next two weeks as the team prepares to kick off against Baylor in early September, much less SEC play later on down the line.

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