First impressions of 15 Tigers on Auburn football's 2026 roster
As the Tigers get closer to their first spring of a new era, here are the players who stood out the most in our conversations with the coaches.
AUBURN — The start of a new era of Auburn football is going to be truly that — new.
With about a month left until the start of spring practices, the Tigers have more than 90 players on their first roster under head coach Alex Golesh.
More than 60% of them were not at Auburn last season.
There’s been even more turnover with the coaching staff, as one might expect from a major overhaul. Golesh retained defensive coordinator DJ Durkin and defensive line coach Vontrell King-Williams, but they’re the only ones. It’s a staff filled with new faces and filled with valuable experience at the SEC and power-conference level.
That staff had to work quickly, putting together a mostly brand-new roster together through the transfer portal and what it was able to grab from the high school ranks after a change that happened just days before National Signing Day.
They’ve all been together for about a month now, going through winter workouts and beginning their football work that will kick into high gear with practices in March.
Over the last two days, all of Auburn’s position coaches were made available for roundtable interviews with the local media. And, a week ago, Golesh, Durkin and offensive coordinator Joel Gordon had their own press conferences.
In today’s Observer newsletter, we’re going to go through our notes from each of these interviews and pick out the Auburn players who stood out the most in the conversations with the coaching staff.
Here’s a rundown of 15 players whose names caught our ears the most over the last couple of weeks, including some who were already here. And, of course, we’ll start with the star transfer quarterback who will be a huge focal point of Year 1.
QB Byrum Brown
The numbers are obviously strong for Byrum Brown: a rare 3,000/1,000 season as a starting quarterback last season at USF, the nation’s leading high-volume rusher in terms of yards per carry, the only quarterback in the FBS who have elite passing and rushing grades from Pro Football Focus, etc.
There’s been a lot of talk the last two weeks, though, about the type of player Auburn is getting in Brown. Gordon called him “tough as nails” and “full of grit,” saying he’s going to inspire Auburn as a program like he did at USF. Golesh said he has “worked maybe as hard as anybody in the country” for the chance to be an SEC quarterback. His confidence stands out to his head coach, because “you can’t fake it” at QB.
Wide receivers coach and former Auburn mainstay Kodi Burns, who was at USF last season, said the Tigers “won’t have to figure out who you are as a team throughout the first couple of games” because they have Brown in the same offensive scheme, joined by a handful of key players who transferred with him. He said that his familiarity with the pieces around him should “accelerate” Auburn’s offense early.
WR Chas Nimrod
There’s been plenty of talk about Auburn adding 6-foot-3 weapons Keshaun Singleton and Jeremiah Koger — USF’s No. 1 and No. 2 receivers from last season — out of the transfer portal. But Burns talked the most about Chas Nimrod, who had 23 catches for 466 yards and three touchdowns in just seven games last year before suffering a season-ending injury. An Arkansas native, the 6-foot-2 Nimrod spent his first three seasons at Tennessee, where he was recruited by Golesh and Burns.
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