Alex Golesh has only been on the Auburn job a couple of months, and he went straight into roster construction mode. By the end of it, the Tigers had added roughly 60 new players, including 39 transfers. The most urgent issue was obvious early. The offensive line was thin, and the head coach didn’t hide the anxiety. 

“To tell you, man, I know we’re going to be elite at certain spots,” Alex Golesh said in his media appearance on February 4. “I’ve prayed a lot about it. And I’m going to continue to pray. If there’s one position I’m praying about, it’s the O-line.”

A relatable fear because Auburn was losing three of five OL starters to graduation, one to the NFL Draft, and another to the portal. Seven more depth players also left. Alex Golesh and his staff responded by signing 13 OL through the portal and the early signing period. 

The approach was split deliberately. Auburn needed immediate help, so the staff targeted experienced players who could play right away. Stanton Ramil and Jack Leyrer both bring multiple years of P4 starting experience. Joseph Simmons, Cole Best, and Cole Skinner were starters at successful G5 programs in 2025. 

At the same time, Auburn signed five freshman offensive linemen and is returning three players who were freshmen last season. Alex Golesh spoke openly about the internal competition: seventeen scholarship linemen, three walk-ons—twenty players who all think they can start.

“When it’s like that, and you know, these jobs are wide open, go take it,” he said. “The level of competition is going to be incredible. And they’re working that way in the weight room.”

The staff believes it now has nine linemen who have played significant college football. The question is whether the rest take a step fast enough to build real depth. And none of this happens without money.

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Per Auburn On3, Auburn has maxed out its $30 million goal for next year’s roster. That puts the Tigers squarely in the national top tier for combined revenue-sharing and NIL funding. Sources say the initial target was closer to $25 million, with $30 million viewed as the upper limit. As portal season unfolded, Auburn pushed past that line.

Alex Golesh acknowledged the adjustment publicly. Coming from South Florida, the difference wasn’t subtle. 

“You’re dealing with a bigger number,” he said. “You’re dealing with a different caliber of athlete, 1 through 105.”

Still, he stressed the challenge wasn’t having more money. It was deciding how to allocate it. The offensive line became one of those decisions, and the rebuilding around it should be enough to scare the other 134 programs. Alex Golesh called it a position “where you win and lose football games,” which is why the market for proven linemen was so competitive.

Alex Golesh had to tear the roster to build it 

Before recruiting even ramped up, Alex Golesh and his staff had to meet with the 2025 roster. That process started almost immediately after he arrived, with barely a month before the portal opened.

“We didn’t play in a bowl game, so those guys were gone a week and a half into me being here,” he said. 

Some conversations dragged on into January, creating an overlap between retention talks and portal recruiting. The actual recruiting, Alex Golesh said, was the easy part. He already had relationships with about 75 percent of the incoming players. As of now, Auburn’s transfer class ranks 13th nationally, and its freshman class sits at 22nd, per 247Sports. Not top-10 territory like the Hugh Freeze era. But those classes never translated into more than five wins.

This time, Alex Golesh is betting on structure, development, and smarter spending. You can decide whether that’s enough. But the scale of the rebuild, especially up front, has already put the rest of the country on notice.