Auburn’s preseason camp has taken on a different edge under Alex Golesh, and the players are noticing it fast.
With fewer than two weeks left before the season opener against Baylor, the Tigers are describing this camp as nothing like the one they went through in 2025. Golesh, known around college football as an offensive mind on the rise, has brought a sharper, more football-only tone to the program, and that shift has carried over to both sides of the ball.
Defensive lineman Malik Autry said the difference is impossible to miss.
“This has been a lot different,” defensive lineman Malik Autry said. “The focus on intent every single day.
When you ask me about last camp, I honestly can’t remember it. But I won’t forget this one, for sure.
Just the intent every single day, even when I wasn’t practicing - watching my brothers go out there and fight and getting even better, then going out there and helping them. Every practice really felt like a game, bro.”
That daily urgency has shown up in the details, from the pace of practice to the way Golesh handles the room. On Tuesday, he was rapping word-for-word to Kodak Black’s “No Flockin,” a moment that reflected the connection he’s building with his players. It’s a different kind of trust, and Auburn’s defense has felt it.
Chris Murray said the coaching emphasis has been clear from the start. The edge rusher pointed to Golesh’s first key to victory and the way that message gets reinforced after every practice.
“The focus is our keys to victory. The first one is to dominate the line of scrimmage,” Murray said on Tuesday.
“That’s literally our first key to victory. Our focus is having good footwork -- even if it’s during the walkthrough.
Just be intentional and lock in for Week 1.
“After every practice, AG puts an attack clip up there. I want to say every practice, and it just keeps going throughout fall camp -- you see a snag, you see a shed, you see violence.
It just kept growing and growing. We took coaching from the meeting room to the field, and we executed it.”
Golesh’s approach has also been about stripping away inconsistency. He said in Monday’s press conference that the worst thing for a player is looking different from one week to the next, because that makes it harder to understand what the player’s process really is.
“The worst thing you can do from a player perspective is have inconsistency on one week. It looks like this, next week it looks like this, then I can’t quite put all that together into what your process looks like,” Golesh said.
“Then you wonder, man, why am I performing at a certain level one week and not the next? The challenge to the players is: Make it feel as normal as you can.
We will do the same in terms of how we practice. For the coaches, especially in Year 1, what does a prep week really look like?
“You have a plan until you go and try to execute it, and you adjust as you go. I think as much of a dress rehearsal as you can have from a game-plan perspective.
I challenge our coaches, too: Don’t treat it like a mock game week. Treat it like a normal game week.
What happens sometimes is you treat it like a mock week, and you’re like, well, we’ll just get to that next week. Or we’ll put in a bunch and then we’ll cut back, which can also be detrimental in a lot of ways.”
Now Auburn has moved from camp work to game prep, and Golesh’s next job is getting the execution cleaned up before Baylor arrives.
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