Opponent Preview: Auburn
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Mascot: Your guess is as good as mine. Tigers, Eagles, or Plainsmen, oh my!
2025 Record: 5-7, 1-7 SEC
Conference: SEC
Series History: Georgia leads 66-56-8
Head Coach: Alex Golesh
Famous Alumni: Octavia Spencer, Charles Barkley, Apple CEO Tim Cook, Frank Thomas, Josh Donaldson, Tim Hudson, Tecmo Bowl legend Bo Jackson, Suni Lee, Toni Tennille, (of the Captain and fame), Jimmy Buffet (didn’t graduate), and probably the Devil himself.
Fun Fact: New head coach Alex Golesh was born in the USSR and came to the United States at the age of seven. He started coaching as an undergraduate at Ohio State and never played above the high school level. Golesh is replacing Hugh Freeze, who likewise never played college football.
YellaFella’s Odyssey
Since it’s been a Hot Odyssey Summer, let’s recall a famous moment from the epic poem. After Odysseus tricks the cyclops and blinds him, he can’t resist taunting the monster. He yells from what he believes to be the safety of his ship to tell Polyphemus his real name. The furious cyclops then asks his father, Poseidon, the god of the sea, to take revenge on the Greek hero. Odysseus’s subsequent journey home takes nearly a decade. What does that have to do with Georgia football?
November 11, 2017, Georgia’s undefeated season ran aground on the rocks of Jordan-Hare. After the game, Gus Malzahn couldn’t resist crowing about “whipping the dog crap” out of Georgia. He said they won “handily” with the smugness of a man telling you about how he got rich in a slip and fall lawsuit.
And that was the last time Auburn fans felt joy.
Gus would turn in three more meh to meh-plus seasons before getting the gate after 2020, setting a record for a coach buyout. His replacement was, inexplicably, Bryan Harsin, a man whose legacy will be serving as the answer to a niche trivia question. Barners immediately hated Harsin, and he only got a second season in the gig because he pulled a Costanza and left the country to avoid firing. I guess they took away his passport when he got back because they canned him after year two.
They then sacrificed the last scraps of their dignity to bring in Hugh Freeze, a man who could make an unlicensed mortician’s skin crawl. Whatever je ne sais quoi (French for BARF) his old time offenses had, he managed to do diddly squat on the Plains. His only memorable accomplishment was losing the 2023 Iron Bowl when they had Bama at 4th and 31 and gave up a touchdown. Remember that? Apparently someone holding the purse strings at Auburn finally did because they gave him a pink slip late last season so he could watch The Blind Side from his hospital bed.
Since firing Gus, Auburn has gone 6-7, 5-7, 6-7, 5-7, and 5-7. That’s an admirable level of futility.
Overseeing things now is Alex Golesh, a coveted up-and-comer most recently at South Florida who almost made the horrible career mistake of taking a job with Arkansas before getting on this sinking ship instead. Golesh is pretty interesting as a person (Alex is short for Aleksey), and he does have SEC bona fides; it’s increasingly looking like he was the brains behind the uptempo offenses Tennessee fielded under Josh Heupel. And his South Florida Bulls went 9-3 last year with a marquee win over Florida. Of course, that’s after going 6-6 in his first two seasons. So he should fit in here nicely.
Last year’s edition of the Deep South’s Oldest Rivalry was a tooth-grinding nightmare that ended 20-10 for the good guys. Auburn fans would like you to believe that’s because the refs have it in for them, but have you all considered that you’ve angered the gods? I suggest you barbecue an eagle to atone. I’m sure you know where to find one.
Offense
Auburn’s coaching instability has been accompanied by similar quarterbacking difficulties. After Bo Nix decamped to Eugene, Auburn has fielded a bunch of replacement-level guys with the career longevity of a World War I fighter pilot. Remember Robby Ashford? Payton Thorne? Jackson Arnold? Ashton Daniels? Me neither.
To stop the bleeding under center, Golesh is bringing along Byrum Brown from South Florida. Brown is absolutely the best athlete the Barners have had at QB since Jarrett Stidham, if not since Cam Newton. He had a breakout year in 2023, passing for 3,292 yards and rushing for 809 more on the ground. His 2024 season was cut short with a leg injury, but last year, he became only the second NCAA quarterback (after Jayden Daniels) to pass for more than 3,000 yards while running for more than 1,000. He also totaled 28 touchdowns through the air and 14 more on the ground. Even adjusted for the talent level of the (brb, Googling) American Athletic Conference, that’s incredibly impressive.
The team’s top five receivers from last year (most notably Cam Coleman) are all playing elsewhere in 2026. But Golesh is also bringing four of his top five receivers from USF, so the PlainsTiglesMen passing attack won’t have to worry too much about getting up to speed. Also, two of the new Auburn wideouts have the incredible names of Chas Nimrod and Christian Neptune.
That familiarity is a good thing, too, because Golesh’s teams employ a veer-and-shoot offense that requires sharp timing and good decision-making skills on the part of the receivers. The scheme evolved out of the similarly named run-and-shoot and borrows elements of the air raid, although it came into its own when RGIII ran it all the way to the Heisman in 2011. You might consider it somewhat gimmicky, but it’s been successful enough in the SEC on Rocky Top that Tennessee fans now watch their games without paper bags over their heads.
Schematically, it’s based on spreading the field, employing trickery to confuse the defense, and ideally going as fast as possible. Receivers generally split way, way out wide to stretch the defense, and they have optional route trees they can run based on their reads of the defenders. Golesh is particularly fond of the trickier elements, often stacking receivers to make the trees even more disorienting. Run by a skilled quarterback like Brown, the veer-and-shoot can make for a long afternoon at the office.
Golesh’s offenses are pass-first, but they rely on a ground attack for balance, especially given how much they rely on playaction. They get a decent RB back in Jeremiah Cobb, but Brown led USF in rushing by about 400 yards over the next closest player. So you can expect to see a lot of uptempo shenanigans that have the potential to make you smoke an entire pack of cigarettes during the game. You know, basically the most annoying type of offensive scheme to defend.
Fortunately, Kirby Smart has tangled with Golesh a couple of times with no small amount of success. The 2022 Tennessee game is probably the best defensive performance I’ve ever seen on a college football field, so I’m more sanguine about this game than I might otherwise be. Especially since it’s in Athens.
Defense
You might be concerned that Auburn will be less hateable now that Freeze is gone, but worry not! Rather than fumigating the Freeze stench all the way out of the athletic offices, they let DJ Durkin hang around to junk the place up. I really don’t understand why you’d keep him around, but I guess the defense was the stronger side of the ball last year? Maybe? Or maybe nobody else knew the Wifi password and how to work the coffee maker, and they’re going to fire him once they get all the logistics squared away.
Regardless, Durkin’s defenses operate out of a 3-3-5 base. Their best pass rusher, Xavier Atkins, is back this year as well, so there’s some continuity. But the 3-3-5 is better suited to stopping a pass-oriented offense. And hey, look at that, Georgia is a team that wants to punish opponents with a brutal ground attack! How about that!
Prediction
Alex Golesh is the first post-Gus hire that hasn’t made me react like this. I think he’s a good coach, and it’s possible he finally gets things in order on the Plains. But Auburn hasn’t won in Athens in more than two decades. The last time they beat the Dawgs in Georgia, “Gold Digger” was #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 and you still needed a .edu email address to create a Facebook account. Next year, when we go to Jordan-Hare, I’ll be a lot more nervous, but I don’t think Auburn can break the streak this year. Auburn might play tough for a half, but I think Georgia salts it away coming home. Georgia 31-Auburn 17.
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