Mailbag: How does aggressive defense work with a Golesh offense?
This week: Talent retention, impact true freshmen, a basketball outlook, scheduling, World Cup memories and a beat writer starting XI
AUBURN — Welcome back to the mailbag. It’s been a fun week here at The Observer, where we turned a quiet offseason stretch into thousands of words written and spoken about a young player to buy into in football, a marathon round of ObservFours the entire basketball schedule and every single varsity sport on campus.
We’ve got a lot more to get to today, so I won’t go into a long and drawn-out introduction. You guys asked some great questions about the makeup of the 2026 Auburn football team — both in terms of scheme and personnel — and there was room for a big-picture look at where Auburn basketball stands after an uneven Year 1.
And, of course, we’re talking some World Cup at the end.
Thanks as always for supporting The Observer and sending in your questions. We’ll do one more next week before I head out on vacation, so feel free to shoot them my way anytime in the next seven days.
Let’s go.
How would you compare and contrast D.J. Durkin’s style of defense with other defensive coordinators that Alex Golesh has worked with in his time as both an offensive coordinator and head coach?
I know that there has been some naysaying about an ultra aggressive defense not pairing well with an ultra-aggressive offense trying to move at the speed of light... short times of offensive possession tiring out good-to-great defenses and the like.
Bandit
Alex Golesh has been talking about wanting to be aggressive in all phases from the moment he arrived on campus. He said it in his opening statement in his introductory press conference, and he talked about it in my first question to him minutes later.
“We’re going to be aggressive, create explosives, create negatives, create turnovers,” Golesh said. “We’re going to be the most violent freaking football team on the field every single Saturday. … If we’re gonna be uber-aggressive and make defenses play on their heels, the defense has gotta match. You’ve got to create extra possessions. You’ve gotta create explosives. You’ve gotta get the ball.”
Because of that, it always made sense for Golesh to retain DJ Durkin as his defensive coordinator. There were the obvious benefits for player retention and scheme continuity, but it always seemed like a good stylistic fit. Durkin is an aggressive coordinator, and pairing that with a high-octane offense could be a fun brand of ball.
But how have defenses paired with what Golesh does, historically? I went back and looked at the defensive radar charts at Game On Paper for the last six seasons for him: UCF in 2020, Tennessee in 2021 and 2022, and USF in 2023 through 2025. Here’s an example of USF’s defensive radar chart from last season: