The Auburn Tigers earned a massive victory in the first game of the Alex Golesh era by hanging on and surviving against the Baylor Bears in Atlanta with an epic two-point conversion stop to preserve the win.

Fans in Mercedes-Benz Stadium who made the trek from The Plains went absolutely wild, and they deserve to. The last half decade of Tigers football have been some of the darkest in program history, and with some real excitement injected by Golesh, fans should enjoy absolutely every single victory.

With that being said, there were some serious signs for concern as to what this team is capable of accomplishing in the 2026 season, especially on the offensive side of the ball.

Byrum Brown deserves some credit for coming through in the clutch in the fourth quarter and being able to lead what proved to be a game-winning drive after Baylor finally tied up the game, but for the significant majority of the afternoon in Atlanta, this looked a whole lot more like a Hugh Freeze coached offense than an Alex Golesh coached one.

Looking sluggish in the running game and the passing game, while also turning the ball over three times on Brown interceptions, this did not look like an offense that was prepared for the coming SEC gauntlet. There are clear issues, especially along the interior of the offensive line, and this is extremely troubling moving forward.

On one hand, Auburn deserves some credit because it just as easily could have begun the season with an FCS opponent, won by 50 and had the chance to continue to fine tune the operation offensively. On the other hand, if Saturday was an indication of what’s to come from Brown and his group of playmakers, the ceiling for what this team can be this year may be a whole lot lower than fans may have hoped.

The good news is that the defense was very much as advertised, and the unit very well could be one of the best in the SEC.

Auburn needs to play a much more complimentary brand of football moving forward though, and with a chance to tune things up this week against Southern Miss, things must improve before the Florida Gators come to town in week three.