BY BRANDON HUGHES
FOR THE OBSERVER
AUBURN — Alex Golesh’s first game as Auburn’s 33rd head coach unfolded like most Auburn games the previous three seasons. The kind of stomach-in-your-throat rollercoaster of a game Tiger fans had hoped was behind them with the coaching change. Auburn jumped out to a 10-0 lead before spending the entire second half trying to hold on before eventually losing the lead. Auburn fans had seen this game play out too many times in the previous few seasons. Last season alone, Auburn lost six one-score games. The difference this time, however, is that the Tigers made plays on both sides of the ball when it mattered, as Auburn (1-0) survived Baylor (0-1) 17-16.
Golesh came to Auburn last November on a résumé built on scoring points. At South Florida, he inherited a program that had won four games over three seasons and left it averaging 43.0 points and 501.7 yards a game, with 43 plays of 30-plus yards in his final season alone. He’s regarded as one of the sharper offensive minds in the sport, so there was some irony in how his Auburn debut actually unfolded. The offense sputtered much of the game, and the Tigers ultimately won with a dramatic stop at the goal line of a two-point conversion with nine seconds left in the game.
Entering 2026, Auburn is one of four Power 4 programs with a head coach, offensive coordinator, and quarterback together for the fourth straight year, joining Georgia, Notre Dame, and Texas. That didn’t seem to matter much as the offense struggled much of the game.
Golesh didn’t sugarcoat the Tigers’ offensive performance: “In the first half, we took turns of who was gonna jack it up the worst, one guy at a time…In terms of execution, it was really, really poor. It was something different play-to-play. That’s on us as coaches.”
Tiger QB Byrum Brown, in his first start at his new school, finished with an up-and-down performance and three interceptions…but he showed up big when it mattered most. On third downs, Brown was an impressive 8-of-12 passing for 110 yards, converting seven first downs. Two of those conversions came on the game-winning drive. First, Brown found Chas Nimrod for 26 yards to set up the Tigers at the Baylor 18-yard line, keeping alive the 10-play, 75-yard drive; then, on third down with 3:26 left to play in a tie ballgame, he finished off the drive himself with an 11-yard dash to the end zone, bulldozing a defender at the goal line on a designed QB run, putting Auburn ahead for good.
“Coach Gordon called it, I followed my blocks, I followed Cobb, he led me to the promised land,” Brown said of the play call.
None of that would have mattered without the defense doing what Auburn’s defense has made a habit of doing under defensive coordinator DJ Durkin. Late-game hero safety Eric Winters forced a QB DJ Lagway fumble on Baylor’s opening drive, and Jared Smith picked off Lagway on the Bears’ second possession. Elijah Melendez had a career-high 12 tackles, Winters added 11 of his own to go with two tackles for loss, and Xavier Atkins, who terrorized SEC backfields a year ago, chipped in a sack and two more TFLs, picking up where he left off last season as Auburn’s first returning defensive All-American since Tracy Rocker in 1988.
Then came the ending. Lagway drove the Bears down the field on their final possession before hitting Gavin Freeman for a touchdown that pulled Baylor to within one with nine seconds on the clock. Rather than kick the extra point and play for overtime, Aranda sent his offense back out to win it outright. “There was no hesitation with that,” Aranda said. “We had so many guys that were just doing everything they can to try to push through and close this game out. I just didn’t feel playing longer was going to benefit us.”
On the two-point attempt, Lagway’s pass for tight end Matthew Klopfenstein went to his inside shoulder, slowing him down just enough, allowing Winters to stop a player who outweighed him by more than thirty pounds in his tracks, sealing the victory. “We were prepared for it,” Winters said. “Once I saw him go, I went too. As soon as he caught the ball, I wrapped him up.”
Saturday proved that survival is learnable. “We found a way,” Golesh said. That’s a modest statement from a coach hired to score points. For a program that spent three years forgetting how to close, it might be the only statement that matters.
By the Numbers:
• Auburn’s 17-16 win was its first decided by a single point since the 2010 Iron Bowl.
• Auburn has won 10 consecutive season openers and is 19-2 in openers since 2006.
• This is the first time Auburn has beaten the same Power Conference out-of-conference opponent in consecutive seasons since 1987/1988, when Auburn beat both North Carolina and Kansas in back-to-back seasons.
Up next
Home versus Southern Miss at 6:45 p.m. on the SEC Network.
