Five Key Quotes From Auburn Head Coach Alex Golesh After Tennessee Loss

The Auburn Tigers couldn’t leave Rocky Top with a win on Saturday afternoon, falling to No. 17 Tennessee 24-12 at Neyland Stadium.

Despite being up at halftime, Auburn couldn’t hold off the Volunteers in a second half, allowing 237 rushing yards to put the game out of hand. Head coach Alex Golesh addressed the frustrations from the loss, including messages for both sides of the ball.

Here are five of his most important takeaways from his postgame press conference.

“You culimate all that when you talk about the margins being really, really small, and we didn’t end up on the right side of those margins by any means.”

Auburn couldn’t clean it up on either side of the ball, leading to the Tennessee second-half comeback on Saturday.

The Tigers had 11 penalties in the loss, totaling 94 yards and extended drives on the Vols’ end while stalling out offensive drives. Auburn also lost the turnover margin, 3-2, with quarterback Byrum Brown having two interceptions and a fumble that lead to one of Tennessee’s touchdowns.

Golesh’s group has to play a cleaner game, and that will be the emphasis heading into the bye week.

“We certainly didn’t affect him in any way. I thought that was a big piece of him being efficient.”

The Auburn head coach is referring to freshman George McIntyre, who relieved true freshman Faison Brandon after committing two turnovers in the first half to Auburn. After McIntyre went in, it field the Tennessee comeback.

He finished with eight completions for 82 yards, but he didn’t have to do much else with the run game battering the Auburn defense. If the Tigers were able to get more pressure to McIntyre to make it uncomfortable early, it would have changed the game script.

Instead, it left the Tigers with a bad taste in their mouth heading back home.

“It felt like there was a rhythm. I felt like we got tempo going and we were able to efficiently run it.”

Auburn’s offense was complimentary, but it was the ground game that was the main factor against Tennessee.

The Tigers recorded 186 yards, being split between Brown, sophomore Omar Mabson and Jeremiah Cobb. Mabson was able to get going in the loss, finishing with 62 yards off of 10 carries. Cobb recorded 17 yards on only three rushes.

Although it was able to get going in the third quarter, no points were able to show for it. Auburn will continue to see elite defenses, and if Golesh can’t get that rhythm consistently, it could have both a spooky vibe around the Plains, and the football facility, in October.

“I still feel like we can be an elite-level defense. There’s obviously some things that we got to clean up, and man, we are as critical of ourselves as there is.”

The defense wasn’t able to hold off the Vols throughout the entirety of the game, but Auburn’s head coach saw pockets of time where the unit played like one of the best in the SEC.

Of course, picking off Brandon and holding him to zero total yards passing is a positive, but the Tigers also only allowed three conversions off of Tennessee’s 14 third-down opportunities throughout the entire game. While the rushing yards allowed was alarming, that can be tightend up with an extra week to prepare for Georgia on Oct. 17.

The Volunteers also had two fourth-down conversions, with one of them being on the final touchdown of the drive to ice the game. That’s important to keep in mind.

“There were some big quarterback run opportunities that were really big.”

Brown was the leader in rushing yards, finishing with 107 yards off of 19 carries. Averaging 5.6 yards per carry on Saturday night, he was a catalyst in getting the Tigers going on the ground, which helped open up the pass.

Several of those runs went on the highlight reel, too. He scored the team’s opening touchdown in the second quarter, evading several Tenneessee defenders to give Auburn the lead going into the break. He also had a 57-yard flash in the fourth quarter that set up the second touchdown of the game.

Unbelievable effort from Byrum Brown here.

Auburn leads 7-3 at the two-minute timeout. pic.twitter.com/w3m9JcOGEr
— Griffin Barfield (@BarfieldGriffin) October 3, 2026

Auburn had its best rushing game all year though, and Brown led that charge on Saturday. That will look to be the key for Golesh for the remainder of the season, getting his fifth-year quarterback involved in the open field to make plays.

Enjoy our content? Make AuburnOnSI a preferred source to see more stories from us on Google by clicking here.

Add us as a preferred source on Google