HotFootballTake: Give Golesh a Minute
Yeah, the portal’s bleeding. The recruiting class is sitting somewhere in the 30s. Auburn fans are restless — and I get it. Big names like Cam Coleman and Deuce Knight are out the door before Alex Golesh has even figured out where all the bathrooms are.
But let’s not confuse noise with disaster.
This isn’t a meltdown. It’s a transition. And in 2025, this is what transitions look like. Roster turnover. Recruits flipping. Headlines that sound worse than the reality.
There's a piece floating around this week that makes Golesh's first month sound like the program's on fire. Read the headlines, and sure, it looks bad. Read past them? It's just what happens when a new coach walks in and tears it down to the studs.
You don’t lose a chunk of your roster because the new guy scared everybody off. You lose them because this is the business now. Players chase NIL. They follow systems. They leave when their guy leaves. Some of the dudes who bolted were never going to fit what Golesh wants to run. Others didn’t want to stick around to find out.
Cam Coleman didn’t bounce because of Golesh. He bounced because Hugh Freeze got fired. Same with Deuce Knight. These aren't emotional decisions. They’re calculated. They're happening at every Power 4 school in America (see FSU and Iowa State).
Now here comes the tired narrative: “Golesh isn’t built for the SEC.”
Come on.
This is the guy who turned Tennessee’s offense into a weapon. First in scoring. First in total yards. And no, he didn’t have a stable of five-stars doing it. He schemed guys open. He ran tempo. He made life easy on his QB and hell on everybody else for that matter.
Then he went to USF — a total rebuild job — and made them dangerous immediately. Set records. Won games. Did it without SEC resources or SEC talent.
Now he’s got both.
And folks are mad he couldn’t glue together a recruiting class that wasn’t even his to begin with?
People keep stacking him up next to Curt Cignetti. Why? Because Cignetti's 62, runs the ball, punts on fourth-and-2, and calls it a day? That’s not Golesh. He wants to run 80 plays, turn every drive into a track meet, and light the scoreboard up. Auburn’s spent a decade stuck in the mud on offense. Golesh brings identity. Finally. Something you can build around.
I don’t know about you, but I’m tired of needing trick plays just to hit 24 points. I’m ready for a system that actually scares people.
And yeah — recruiting's rough right now. That’s what December looks like in a coaching change. Half the staff is new, half the class flips, and the rest are just trying to figure out who’s still committed. You patch it up, survive the cycle, and go to work after spring ball. It’s not broken. It’s just the process now.
Same with the portal. You lose some, you bring some in. That’s the deal. Golesh is going to bring his guys — guys who fit what he wants to run. That’s how you build a program in this era. Not by holding on to every leftover piece. But by starting fresh with players who fit the vision.
He’s not here to babysit someone else’s roster. He’s here to build his own.
So yeah, it feels messy right now. That’s how it always looks early. But it’s not chaos. It’s a reset. Gutting the old wiring so it doesn’t short-circuit on Saturdays next fall.
Golesh isn’t panicking. Neither should you.
Let him work.