Observations: Day 1 of 2026 Auburn Football Fall Camp
Let's unload the notebook from a busy first day of practices — including a new-look offensive line and two young guys who turned heads.
AUBURN — Coaches have said for the last several weeks that all the summer work for a football team is important, but it’s not real football.
You don’t know what that’s really going to look like until you hit the practice field.
Wednesday morning was the first step toward finding out just what Auburn will be this fall under first-year head coach Alex Golesh and his staff. The Tigers bused over from their home base at Grand National in Opelika and hit the football facility for their first official practice day of fall camp.
And how did practice go?
“I thought it was juicy,” center Cole Best said.
As much as I would love to leave it at that, it probably deserves some explanation.
There’s a ton of excitement — a ton of “juice,” if you will — from this Auburn team as it’s about a month away from the start of a new era. Even pre-practice stretches had a real energy to them. Team leaders were leaping high and shoulder-bumping each other around Golesh in the huddle.
Golesh called it the best time of year, and it looks like his team is taking that to heart.
“It's obviously always great to be out here,” Best said. “I thought we came out with the right intent. … Heat definitely gets to some guys. It's a little bit different than spring ball.”
Media members were allowed to watch the first half-hour of practice Wednesday morning, and that was followed after practice by several player interviews. (We’ll get another viewing window, plus interviews with more players and Golesh, on Thursday.)
Here is everything we saw and heard from the Tigers’ first day of fall camp at the football performance center Wednesday, starting with perhaps the biggest position group of interest ahead of the 2026 season.
The first look at a revamped offensive line
Auburn’s offensive line was already going to be a top priority to track in fall camp, even before Golesh announced Tuesday that rising sophomore Tai Buster would miss around the first half of the regular season with an injury.
The practice debut, essentially, of Michigan State transfer Stanton Ramil would also be a major storyline after he wasn’t cleared in spring practices while recovering from an offseason surgery. Auburn’s front five would definitely look different from the last time we saw them, no matter what.
On Wednesday, the first-team offensive line in drills was: