Auburn is in pure rebuild mode in Alex Golesh‘s first season on the Plains, and that cold, hard truth has been on display over the past 2 weeks.
The Tigers took it on the chin on Saturday afternoon in Oxford, getting pounded by a 45-15 score against 12th-ranked Ole Miss. It was a humbling loss for Golesh and his team, which dropped back to .500 overall with a 4-4 record to go with a 2-4 mark in the SEC.
But if the thrashing in Week 9 felt familiar to Auburn fans, it shouldn’t surprise anybody. Because there was also a thrashing in Week 8 for Auburn, at home against then-No. 18 LSU, which took apart Golesh’s team by a 38-17 score.
That incredible upset win at then-No. 1 Georgia 2 weeks ago has to feel like a distant memory to everyone who cares about Auburn football, because the 2 games since have been really bad — historically bad.
So bad that the combined losing margin against LSU and Ole Miss is the largest in a 2-game losing streak by Auburn in exactly 50 years.
The math is quick and harsh. A 21-point loss followed by a 30-point loss combining for a -51 scoring margin in Weeks 8 and 9.
You have to go back to the 1976 season, when Doug Barfield’s first Auburn team finished that campaign by losing to Georgia by 28 points (a 28-0 loss) and to Alabama by 31 points (a 38-7 loss). That was a combined -59 scoring margin, so the 2026 team didn’t quite eclipse that sad total but came awfully close.
It still remains to be seen whether this Auburn team will finish with a winning record or not and whether Golesh will ultimately be the long-term answer.
But what is known is that these Tigers are in the middle of a disastrous stretch that immediately followed a glorious victory over the then-No. 1 team in the country.
Cory Nightingale, a former sportswriter and sports editor at the Miami Herald and Palm Beach Post, is a South Florida-based freelance writer who covers Alabama for SaturdayDownSouth.com.
