Where will Auburn football's pass rush come from this season?
The Tigers return just 40% of their pressures from last year. But there are a lot of intriguing — and versatile — options to watch for this fall.
And we’re back. Special thanks to Dan Peck, Henry Patton, Justin Lee, AUNerd, Jordan Hill, Adam Cole, Painter Sharpless, Dave McKinney and Pablo for filling in during my vacation last week and providing Observer subscribers plenty of good stuff.
We’ll now return to (mostly) scheduled programming, starting with today’s newsletter about an aspect of Auburn football I think is flying under the radar this preseason.
AUBURN — Alex Golesh has been preaching the importance of being aggressive in all phases of the game from the moment he landed on the Plains.
It’s a big reason why he retained DJ Durkin as his defensive coordinator, despite him being a finalist for the very job he got at Auburn. It’s a big reason why Durkin made sure to keep defensive line coach Vontrell King-Williams, and it’s a big reason why new edges coach. Coleman Hutzler signed up for a fifth different job with Durkin.
Aggression on the defensive side of the ball can take on many forms, but one of the best examples comes in the pass rush. When you think of the best Auburn defenses, from the Pat Dye and Tommy Tuberville days through the Kevin Steele units under Gus Malzahn, images of quarterbacks under constant duress come to mind.
According to Pro Football Focus, Auburn has averaged 18.6 and 17.8 quarterback pressures per game over the last two seasons. Both of those marks rank inside the top four for Auburn defenses since season-long data started to be tracked in 2014.
In terms of sacks per game, Auburn averaged a solid 2.5 — good enough for No. 31 in the country and No. 6 in the SEC. That was the best mark for any Auburn defense in that category since 2021, when the Tigers leaned on a healthy trio of Derick Hall, Colby Wooden and Eku Leota.
This would be a solid foundation to build on for 2026, especially with similar management up top in Durkin and familiarity with the likes of King-Williams and Hutzler on the coaching staff.
However, Auburn is returning just 40.7% of its quarterback pressures generated from last season. The top two players in that category — Keyron Crawford (43) and Keldric Faulk (30) are now in the NFL. All in all, Auburn lost four of its top six players in quarterback pressures from last season.
Auburn will enter the 2026 season without an established name in the pass rush outside of Xavier Atkins, who has plenty of other duties as an inside linebacker. The Tigers added several transfers who will undoubtedly help them reload, but none of them have been stars at getting after the quarterback in the SEC at this point.
What Auburn does have, though, is a surprisingly deep group of names that flash real upside for the upcoming season. While there might not be a household name coming off the edge now, it only takes a handful of games to get yourself in that conversation.
Let’s break down the wide range of names who will try to fill in the vacancies left by Crawford and Faulk — and, perhaps, push the overall play of the pass rush to a new level in a new era under an attack-minded head coach.
Da’Shawn Womack: The Experienced SEC Transfer
Durkin’s high success rate recruiting the DMV area — specifically the football factory of St. Frances Academy in Baltimore — paid dividends in the transfer portal this past offseason, when Auburn landed Da’Shawn Womack after stops at Ole Miss and LSU.
Womack has the look of an NFL pass-rusher right off the bat, measuring at 6-foot-5 and 265 pounds. He’s hard to miss on the practice field, showing the length and the pop in the pass rush that any team covets.
Last season at Ole Miss, Womack was a rotational pass-rusher, appearing in all 15 games for the Rebels in their run to the College Football Playoff semifinals. His standard stats — 4.5 tackles for loss and a pair of sacks — don’t scream stardom.
However, it’s worth noting that PFF had Womack down for 19 quarterback pressures in 173 pass-rushing snaps last season. That means, essentially, he got to the quarterback around 11% of the time. Compare that to Faulk, who was at 9.4% last season for the Tigers. Also: In his two seasons at LSU, Womack was between 15% and 17% with his win rate in the pass rush, albeit at smaller sample sizes.
During spring practices, Womack earned rave reviews from coaches, with Golesh going out of his way to say he was playing “high, high-level football.” He showed he could play with his hand in the dirt as well as standing up, meaning the Tigers could pair him with smaller-sized edge rushers in the same package.
With a starter-quality amount of snaps, there’s a chance Womack’s counting stats surge at Auburn. He’s gotten three years of experience playing in the SEC, and he’s got both coaches and teammates he knows quite well. There’s a real chance he uses Auburn as a platform to get to the NFL with a breakout 2026 season.
