Alex Golesh evaluating Auburn QB room 'like crazy' as he takes over

Among the issues of the past few years now on The Plains, quarterback play has been very much among them for Auburn. That makes it one of the first things to be best determined by Alex Golesh in his first days on the job with the Tigers.

During his introductory press conference on Monday, Golesh discussed his decision-making process at quarterback, especially in the coming weeks as their new head coach in determining who’s staying, who’s leaving, and who’s coming in as far as that position room. He said, regardless of any of that yet, this is going to be something that takes time as they ensure they pick the right quarterback for next fall in his debut season.

“Yeah, I think that’s a great question. You know, I’ve been in situations where you knew, going into spring, who your one, two, and three were. We were in that boat a year ago. I’ve been in situations, shoot, more times than I can even think of where it went all the way through August. I don’t know if you can rush that part of it,” said Golesh. “I do know this. You want to have the best competition you possibly can in a room, because, if you do, you let these guys compete, give them every opportunity to grow, develop within the base foundation of what you are from a system standpoint. And then you pick the guy that you feel like gives you the best chance to win, and there’s so many factors that go into that. There’s obviously the mental side of it. Like, who can process it faster than anybody else? There’s obviously the physical component to it.”

Again, it’s a process, and one he knows he doesn’t have to explain why they have to get right. But, it’ll be especially important in his offensive system, as they believe in building and developing everything they do on that side of the ball from the quarterback and his skillset out.

“I think quarterback play is so much about putting a system together that fits the quarterback. I think so much in college football is about, man, we run a system, this is what we do and this is how we do it. I think elite coaches can say, man, this is the best quarterback we got, and now let’s tailor a system to him, and it’s truly the same for every other position in making sure that you’re fitting your system around the quarterback,” Golesh said. “I think that’s what’s so unique about what we do offensively. You really study us and look at what we do, it’s not – we talked about being able to adjust earlier, but it’s not plug and play. What we do schematically changes year to year, it grows as the year goes and as the quarterback grows. It grows as you have injuries potentially and you got to adjust personnel settings. It’s always going to be about players, formations, plays offensively.

“The quarterback is certainly the most critical piece of that. Part of that is recruiting the right guy. Part of that is elite development at that position…and I think fitting a system around whoever ends up being the one, and then ultimately the two and the three, will be absolutely critical to our success this fall.”

As for options, Auburn does still have several quarterbacks from this past season under Hugh Freeze who could choose to return under Golesh. Among them are Ashton Daniels (4 games – 57.1% completion for 199.3 passing ypg., 5 total touchdowns), Jackson Arnold (10 games – 63.3% completion for 130.9 passing ypg. 14 total touchdowns), and the former five-star freshman in Deuce Knight (2 games – 68% completion for 129.5 passing ypg., 6 total touchdowns). Now, along with others at the position, Golesh says his staff will continue “evaluating it like crazy” over the next week or so to determine what the room will look like, with a month from today being when the window will open for the NCAA Transfer Portal.

“You look at a room that’s uber-talented. Young in some ways. Experienced in some ways. And, as we work through and navigate, truly, who wants to be here, who wants to continue in their development under this coaching staff, I think we’ll have more clarity here in the next, I would say, week, week and a half in terms of that,” said Golesh. “We’ve met with a majority of the guys that are here. We’re going to finish here this morning. And then really try to make some decisions in terms of who wants to be here, who truly doesn’t want to be here and then we’ll figure out how to attack the room after that.

“There’s some talented, talented, talented dudes sitting in that room. They have tape, certainly, at this level. We’re evaluating it like crazy. We evaluated it coming in. I think the biggest thing that we’ve got to figure out right now is the competition part of that – are you going to add somebody else, are you going to add multiple people?”

Golesh should have plenty of roster-building to do, including at quarterback with their starter maybe not even on the roster yet, over the next two months to begin his tenure at Auburn. From there will be the depth chart part, with it maybe taking all the way up until kickoff for them to know who’ll be QB1 for the Tigers in ’26.

“I don’t think you can rush that part of it…And, at the end of the day, the competition will take as long as it needs to,” said Golesh. “I think, in a perfect world, you’d love to know in January. In our situation here, we won’t, and we probably won’t until August, I would imagine, unless spring ball carries out in such a fashion that you’ll know.”