Can Auburn's new-look offense be the cure for its red-zone blues?
While the Tigers have been dreadful from close range recently, Alex Golesh and Co. have been excellent. How might that translate to the Plains?
AUBURN — If it felt like Auburn football wasted more scoring opportunities than it finished last year, you were onto something.
In fact, in each of the last two seasons, Auburn turned less than half of its trips inside the red zone into touchdowns. The Tigers finished both 2024 and 2025 scoring touchdowns just 48.78% of their times inside the opponent’s 20-yard line.
Only 13 teams in the FBS had a red-zone touchdown percentage of lower than 50% in 2025, and the exact same number was below that threshold in 2024 as well. But only two teams were below 50% in both seasons: Northwestern and… Auburn.
Northwestern was led by a former defensive coordinator who abruptly became the interim head coach after a scandal and was ranked in the 50s of the Team Talent Composite, placing no higher than 15th in its own conference in both seasons.
Auburn was led by a longtime head coach who had been known for his offensive prowess earlier in his career and had a top-20 roster in college football in both seasons after going all-in on rebuilding through high school recruiting.
Same results. Well, actually, Northwestern at least made it to a bowl game in 2025.
Of all the strikes against Hugh Freeze during his time on the Plains, the inability to put points on the board — especially in clear-cut scoring situations — was his great undoing. Things only got worse for the Tigers in conference play: They scored six touchdowns on 16 red-zone visits vs. SEC opponents in 2025 before Freeze’s firing.
Over the final six times an Auburn offense got into the red zone under Freeze, it scored a grand total of zero touchdowns. There have only been three offenses in the last six seasons of SEC football to finish a season with a sub-50% touchdown percentage in the red zone. Auburn is responsible for two of them now.
Finishing drives has been arguably the biggest problem for Auburn football during this brutal stretch of results for the program. The touchdown rate started plummeting toward the end under Gus Malzahn, and it wasn’t any better in the short-lived Bryan Harsin experiment. Freeze’s first season was much more successful, but then the bottom fell out to historically bad lows over the next two.
And this is where Alex Golesh and his staff come into the picture.
Golesh’s reputation for offensive football has been well-documented, and it shows up in various ways on the stat sheets. However, the biggest difference from what Auburn has had to what it could have now under him is finishing drives — and that’s essentially what the sport of football is all about.
Here is where Auburn has ranked in offensive red-zone touchdown percentage in the FBS over the last six seasons, compared to what offenses that have either been coordinated by Golesh (UCF 2020, Tennessee 2021-2022) or head coached by him (USF 2023-2025) were putting up in that same category: