Auburn football ended its SEC home losing streak with a 21-15 win over Vanderbilt, but Alex Golesh knows the Tigers must keep improving. Slow starts, missed tackles and offensive inconsistency remain concerns as Auburn prepares for Tennessee and a brutal October schedule.
The Auburn Tigers win over Vanderbilt wasn't pretty.
The offense finished with 287 total yards. Seven of Auburn's 21 points came from special teams. The Tigers missed 16 tackles and went 0-for-4 trying to stop Vanderbilt on fourth down.
There is obviously plenty to fix.
But it's also okay to be happy and celebrate a victory.
Auburn also won an SEC game at home for the first time since 2024.
Considering what this program has looked like the last few years, I'm not going to dismiss that.
Auburn needed to learn how to finish games before it could worry about making those wins look pretty.
“I thought overall, you go back and watch the tape, I thought two things really,” Alex Golesh said. “The effort on all three sides of the ball. I thought we continue to play with a high level of effort.”
That's the foundation Golesh keeps talking about.
But that same foundation has to grow every single week. You don't fix one thing and then just move on to the next. The thing you already fixed has to continue to improve along with everything else.
“It can't be a week-to-week deal,” Golesh said. “Everything that we've corrected, we've adjusted. Good football teams continue to get better as the year goes.”
The Tigers reduced their missed tackles from 24 against Florida to 16 against Vanderbilt.
Better, but still not good enough.
Auburn protected Byrum Brown better, but the offense still started slowly and scored only 14 points.
Golesh wants all of those improvements to start stacking on top of each other.
“Everything that you are emphasizing, like don't stop and just add more,” Golesh said. “Don't assume that we've learned and we've grown.”
Now Auburn gets to find out how much it has actually learned.
Because Vanderbilt was survivable with these issues.
Knoxville might not be. And the way they kept it close with the top team in the country last week, it probably won't be.
Auburn could start slowly, struggle to establish the run and still find a way to beat Vanderbilt 21-15.
Doing that against Tennessee in Auburn's first truly hostile road environment is a completely different challenge and could lead to a completely different outcome.
Golesh knows the slow starts have to change.
“We've obviously got to start better,” Golesh said. “This has been a thing since we started the season.”
He also made it clear who's responsible.
“I truly own that,” Golesh said. “We've got to figure it out, and we got to figure it out right now.”
The season is about to get really challenging over the next four games. If they can figure it out quickly, this team still has what it takes to be one of the best teams in the conference.
