Mailbag 233: Can a Golesh offense and a great defense coexist?
This week: Roster priorities, the Golesh playbook, QB1 in 2026, where Auburn basketball must improve, Fall Out Boy and the CFB Champions League
AUBURN — Welcome back to the mailbag, returning to its usual time slot.
It’s been another eventful week on both the football and the basketball side, even though neither team has played a game since last Saturday night. Alex Golesh did a marathon press conference and got closer to putting his staff together, while Steven Pearl and his team got back from Arizona to work on itself before heading to Atlanta.
This mailbag covers a lot of ground in both sports, from the football Xs and Os and roster management side to the areas for improvement for basketball after a couple of lopsided losses to two juggernauts. At the end, we dust off one of my favorite pieces from my time at The Observer: The College Football Champions League format.
Thanks as always for making these busy times enjoyable ones here at The Observer, both on the newsletter side and the podcast side. As a reminder, if you want to become a new subscriber or want to give a gift one for the holidays, we’re still running that 25% off sale — just $45 for the first full year — until Christmas Day.
Let’s go.
How good have defenses been operating opposite Golesh’s high-tempo offense, and does it create a ceiling for how good a defense can be?
John
The offensive philosophy utilized by Golesh over the last several years of his collegiate coaching career puts plenty of stress on defenses. His offenses have been either No. 1 or No. 2 nationally in pace — based on the number of seconds per play — since he first became a coordinator. It’s an aggressive mindset that wants to play fast, throw the ball deep and stay in attack mode on early downs.
Naturally, some fans will be concerned if all that stress on defenses will include Golesh’s own. If you play as quickly as possible, you run the risk of putting your defense on the field more often and limiting the amount of rest it can get between drives. This is a common fear with fast-paced teams, and you heard it all the way back when Gus Malzahn was on the Plains.
The good news is that this season showed that Golesh’s hyper-speed offense can coexist with a quality defense.
In 2025, USF ranked No. 5 nationally in yards per play and No. 2 nationally in points per game. The Bulls finished the regular season with the No. 9 offense in college football in SP+, which takes strength of schedule into account. By all accounts, this is the type of offense that Golesh had been working toward in Tampa during his rebuild.
On the defensive side, USF finished the regular season at No. 37 in yards allowed per play and No. 56 in points allowed per game. That was good enough for the No. 1 total defense in the American and the No. 5 scoring defense — and the Bulls were just three total points behind the conference leader in that category.
USF had to build up to that level on both sides of the ball after being a team that won just four games in the three years before Golesh’s arrival, so its first two seasons naturally didn’t have the same results. But it’s a good sign for Auburn’s future that elite offense and strong defense, especially compared to its peers, could coexist.
Going back to Golesh’s time as the offensive coordinator at Tennessee under Josh Heupel, the Volunteers ranked in the top half of the SEC in total and scoring defense in the 2022 season and was in the top half in total defense in the 2021 season. Tennessee improved in both stat categories from 2020 to 2021, Heupel’s first year, despite going from a defensive-minded head coach to an offensive-minded one.
Can you have an elite, dominant defense alongside such a fast, aggressive offense? That remains to be seen. But can you have a good-to-great one in your conference? Yes, you can. Golesh got up to that level at USF, and Tennessee had some of that, too.
In the end, I think Auburn should be willing to have some sort of soft ceiling on its defensive numbers under Golesh in exchange for the elite offensive numbers. Eight of the 10 power-conference teams in this season’s College Football Playoff are in the top 15 nationally in Offensive SP+. Auburn had a top-15 defense in SP+ but still finished with a losing record because it was No. 59 on offense.
Offense is the area that has held back Auburn from being a true contender for the better part of the last decade. You want to be great on both sides of the ball, for sure, but the Tigers had to address their offensive issues first and foremost with this coaching change.
The 2026 football roster will probably look very different. Do you have any specific thoughts at this point? Everyone is concerned about QB, with good reason... and we already have 2 WR in the portal, but I see needed help along the line of scrimmage. Do you agree?
Bandit