Quotes of Note: Alex Golesh closes door on Vanderbilt, looks towards Tennessee
The Auburn Tigers have hit another week in their regular season and now prepare to take on a tough month of October ahead of them with three out of their four games being on the road.
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Auburn took a 21-15 victory against the Vanderbilt Commodores in Week 4 of its campaign, a win highlighted by Omar Mabson II blocking a punt and Cade Carlson returning it for a touchdown.
The Tigers turn their attention towards the Tennessee Volunteers, who are coming off of a loss to the No. 1 Texas Longhorns in Neyland Stadium.
Auburn Head Coach Alex Golesh held his weekly press conference on Monday, giving the media a chance to ask some questions heading into the week.
Here are some of his most notable quotes from the session:
On his respect for former colleague Josh Heupel:
“I got so much respect for Coach Heupel. Gave me an opportunity in 2020, and brought me with him to Tennessee. Man, changed in a lot of ways how I look at offensive football, how I look at just running a program and really, really high-end smart, really phenomenal leader. I got a ton of respect. Has certainly been a really good friend. Was really, really good to me when I was with him. Helped me in a lot of ways to one, get my first opportunity to be a head coach. Supported me all through that. Really, really good human being. Incredible family. Really good people.”
On the recent offensive line changes:
“I think there was certainly some positive with both how we ended up starting it and two, how we were able to rotate a little bit. I thought we kept guys fresh, which was a huge benefit for us in the second half. I think we're continuously evaluating it. I mentioned it last week—and evaluating it in the sense of that was the end result, there was some positive, there was also some negative. Being really critical of that, and then letting these guys go compete again and it's gonna continuously be just like every other position, competition every single week.”
On the differences of his schemes since his time at Tennessee:
“When you really study it, we look so drastically different than what we did at UCF six years ago. We look different than we did a year ago at South Florida. Honestly, in a lot of ways, we looked different last week than we did Week 1. As we put guys in situations that we think, 'man, he can handle this' or 'he's really good at this,' you can get into a game and you're like, 'he's not really good at that.' Like, let's rewind back.”
On the development of Jourdin Crawford:
“Jourdin, he just played his best game here this past weekend against Vanderbilt. He's a young guy that played some as a freshman, got his feet wet. I think has tried to figure out one, what are these guys really looking for me? And Vontrell is really, really simple. Vontrell's not a hard guy to figure out in terms of what you play for him: consistency, effort, consistency, effort, consistency, effort. I think Jourdin has been trying to one, get his body right. Two, figure out, man, if that's what it takes, I can do that. But now doing it consistently in practice to where Vontrell and really the whole defensive staff trusts him to go in play-in and play-out.”
On possibly giving Byrum Brown more designed runs:
“I think there's a fine balance there, and the balance is really, really simple. We've got to run the football. We also can't be one-dimensional in the sense of how we run it, and we also have to make sure that he's up right through the season. And so there's certainly a fine line there. What's made Byrum really, really special as a runner over the years is that he creates on his own at times, which is sometimes better than any designed run game you can have. And so we've tried to be really calculated. We've tried to be really smart with when and how. I think you have to be.”
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