Alex Golesh previews Auburn's Week 4 game vs Vanderbilt

For the first time this season, Alex Golesh addressed the media following a loss.

The Auburn Tigers lost their first game under Alex Golesh on Saturday, falling to the Florida Gators in Week 3, 44-39, its first SEC loss of the season. Following Saturday’s game, Golesh addressed the need to watch film and diagnose what went wrong schematically and what caused the abundance of penalties for the Tigers. Golesh shared his biggest takeaway from film-watching on Monday.

“Essentially 10 possessions each. And they were better in their 10 than we were in our 10 if you want to look at it like that. I certainly look at it that way,” Golesh said Monday.

What else did Golesh say during his Monday press conference? Check out the key quotes below.

“The three-and-out. And then to get the ball inside the ten and go three-and-out and end up with the field goal. Obviously, it was just handled really, really poorly. And then you claw back, and that sequence of giving up a score right before half, in the two minutes, not having enough time to go offensively and then flip it. They get the ball, they go score, we go three and out. And that ends up being a huge, huge swing. That, if that piece turns out different, you feel like you can play the rest of the game out different. You end up in an essentially two-minute mode the entire fourth quarter, and you claw back, but you’re not running your offense the way that you feel like you want to run it.”

“Defensively, the story of it is really twofold. One, not getting aligned and execute at the level that you have to against an offense like that. That shifts motions, uses tempo and some unique situations that, and I use unique situations in the sense that they were going to force you to stay in the personnel you were in and you were going to have to go play out situational football. We didn’t adjust well in any way in that. That’s on top of 24 missed tackles for just over 120 yards. The 11 explosives (plays), certainly can’t play defense that way. We were 1-for-6 on third and fourth-and-short. You know, and there’s a bunch of plays that stick out, but there’s three that were like definitive ‘you got to get off the field’ moments. It was the touchdown on third and long in the first half. Another third-and-long in the high, high red. We get a face mask where it gives them the first down, leads to a touchdown. And then, obviously, the fourth-and-one long run where you got to get a stop and get off the field to be able to then go and make a two score to a one score and give yourself a chance at the end and you don’t. So that’s essentially the story of it.”

“What really was frustrating is we dictated the flow defensively. We take a lot of pride in dictating the flow offensively. It felt like we were on our heels, at least through those first couple of drives, and then after halftime it felt the same way where we could never get truly settled. I want to give you the truth of what it is, we never got settled. We never felt like we were able to get our cleats in the ground, communicate, adjust, and then be perfect in our fits. From a focus standpoint we were off, and by focus I mean truly the ability to play really fast with elite detail where you’re showing a picture, they check, you check, or they’re showing a picture, and then they motion out of it, and we’re just in sync from a communication standpoint. We weren’t. I tie it back to a lot of different things, but primarily the ability to just focus one play at a time, play to play to play. We didn’t do that Saturday. We didn’t do it defensively. We didn’t do it early offensively. Again, that’s our job to figure out exactly why. Is there too much that we have in? Is it too many checks that we have in? Are we allowing our kids to go play really fast? Because when we do allow our kids to play really fast, we match up well, we fly to the ball, we tackle, all of those things. Explosives are created because of missed tackles and missed assignments. That can’t be how you play defense. We have had a lot of conversations about how we allow our kids to play fast because they do play hard, they do run to ball. Now, that’s half of it. The other half is you have to execute within the detail and you have to be able to communicate. We didn’t do a good enough job Saturday. We weren’t remotely in the stratosphere of doing a good enough job on Saturday.” 

A team that’s playing with a freshman quarterback who’s playing really well, coming off a big win on Saturday night at home. Again, offensively similar to what we just saw. Multiple in every imaginable way of both personnel, formationally, tempo, using it in and out. Defensively, our guys saw it a year ago. It’s continued to evolve and change as our personnel continue to evolve and change. They switched quarterbacks. The freshman played week one, played week two, started last week. And he’s as, for a young guy, that’s in his fourth game coming into college, is really, really special. There’s a reason why he was recruiting the way he was. That what he looks like right now. Physical, big, quick trigger, like really, really confident. People are going to keep saying, young guy, he is. He don’t look young. He doesn’t look young on film. Does a really, really good job. And they do a good job offensively, putting him in really good situations. He can throw it, can make every throw on the field. He can make every off-scheduled throw and he has here through his early time in the season. Against Austin Peay in Delaware and then last week and starting against NC State.

“It’s different than last time I was in the league in terms of what the new coordinator. He’s in his third year and they are attacking in every imaginable way. They try to dictate the flow of the game and they’ve done that here through these first three weeks. It’ll be a big challenge for us to one, be ready for as much pressure as they bring and the multiplicity of what they do defensively. And then we got to go find ways to go get first downs really early in the game. So that’s where we are. Florida, that’s Vandy.”

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This article originally appeared on Auburn Wire: Alex Golesh previews Auburn’s Week 4 game vs Vanderbilt