Golesh Is a Football Guy First
Cole Cubelic
I love what I've seen from Marlborough this spring. I am an Alex Golesh fan, have been since I got to know him when he was the OC at Tennessee. There's a handful of guys in college football right now that people see what the offense is and they think that they immediately go with the crowd that has been classified with that offense as soft. Jeff Lebby is one. Josh Heupel is one. Alex Golesh is one. Everyone sees the receivers four inches from each sideline and the vertical shots and they just think — oh, well, he just wants to throw it around the yard. Like, no, Jeff Lebby emphasizes the trenches every single day. Alex Golesh is the same way.
Context
Cole's defense of the Auburn hire. Golesh wasn't on top of the search board ("fell into Auburn's lap" circumstantially), but Cole is bullish anyway. The strategic insight: the Heupel-tree spread — wide receiver splits, vertical shots — keeps getting miscategorized as soft / gimmicky / Hugh Freeze 2.0. In reality these coaches are line-of-scrimmage guys (Lebby was an OL by trade) running a different-looking but trenches-emphasized program.
The same framing rebuts a likely Auburn fan critique heading into 2026 — that Golesh is "tricky" rather than "tough."