Observations: The 2026 A-Day Game

The first "win" of the Alex Golesh Era featured breakout performances, disruptive defense and up-and-down play from some bigger names.

(Payton Smith/The Auburn Observer)

AUBURN — It’s always tough to figure out how seriously to take a spring game.

Auburn’s two coordinators went in one direction, according to head coach Alex Golesh. DJ Durkin was mad that his defense didn’t get credit for a pick-six.

Joel Gordon was mad because he didn’t know how many timeouts his offense had in a two-minute drill, even though it was the final drive and the “victory” was well in hand.

Golesh didn’t pay any attention to the board, which read Offense 64, Defense 43 as the clock hit all zeroes in the fourth quarter. He didn’t even come up with the “stupid scoring system” for offense versus defense in the first place.

“I’m like, ‘Who cares, just go play ball,’” Golesh said afterwards. “I say it jokingly, but — uber-competitive staff.”

Golesh was clearly in the other direction. He was much more measured in what happened in his first A-Day Game at Jordan-Hare Stadium and what happened in his first spring in charge of the Tigers altogether.

That mindset was also evident in some of his players. Just ask defensive back Newboy Fegans, who tied for the team lead in tackles and made quite a few plays for a very active first-team defense early.

“I mean, it feels good,” Fegans said. “But it's just A-Day. You know what I mean?”

Good or bad, it’s important not to overreact to what happens in a spring game. It’s the final and most notable practice, yes. But it’s just one of 15 practices — and one of three scrimmages — during this time of year.

Because of that, this A-Day Game not being televised or streamed anywhere probably wasn’t the worst thing in the world for the coaching staff. Golesh even said afterwards that Durkin’s defense was “relatively vanilla,” because “there's nothing that these guys have put in this spring that I wanted out there on any sort of tape.”

The 34,276 fans in attendance at Jordan-Hare Stadium will be the only ones who got to see all of this spring game with their own eyes. They saw some big highlights on both sides of the ball, up-and-down play from well-known names and a few young players break out on a bigger stage for the very first time.

But, as the great modern philosopher Allen Iverson once said, we’re talking about practice — not a game. Practice has value. Practice can provide meaningful takeaways. Practice is something that’s worth paying attention. It’s still practice.

And, because it’s just practice, the most important victory can ultimately be found on the injury report.

“There's no winner in the whole thing, other than our team having nobody getting banged up,” Golesh said. “You sit there and you say a prayer before, you say it at each TV timeout, and we made it out healthy.”

Auburn will exit its first set of practices together feeling like it got a lot accomplished.

The head coach has been big on establishing a culture for a program that needs to win again, and he believes that “we’ve got a chance to be a good football team” if the Tigers can “stay together” and “stay connected” in the locker room. Golesh felt like Auburn got what it wanted with its scheme and its approach this spring.

But the Tigers have a lot of work to do over the next four months and change.

“We're nowhere where we need to be,” Fegans said. “All of that comes with time. … I feel like our guys are gonna be steady and just stay the course and build into the fall, when it really matters.”

Here are four Observations from Auburn’s A-Day Game, along with the No-Huddle Notes, the Quote of the Day and great photos from our new stringer, Payton Smith.

But, first, here’s a look at the final stats for the offense and the defense.

(Payton Smith/The Auburn Observer)

What’s the right read on Byrum Brown’s A-Day showing?