Discussion Of Xavier Atkins Rumor, What Alex Golesh Can Do

This is the Locked On Podcast Network, celebrating 10 years of your team every day. Hey, sports fans, it's JD, the host of Locked On Cardinals. And did you know with the Discover Cashback card, it's payback time when you earn cash back on everyday purchases. Activate and earn 5% cash back at different categories each quarter on up to $1,500 in purchases. That's 5% cash back at different places each quarter, like grocery stores, on gas and at restaurants. It pays to Discover. Terms apply. See discover.com/five for details. With the rumors and chatter and speculation about Xavier Atkins and the Auburn football program that should do it in today. You are Locked On Auburn, your daily podcast on the Auburn Tigers, part of the Locked On Podcast Network, your team every day. Yes, I'm Zac Blackerby. He is Lindsay Crosby of Auburn Daily and Million Other Places. This is Locked On Auburn. Want to talk about just the state of Auburn compared to other things that we saw Saturday. That's coming up as well as what do we even know about this football team? And what do we know about this conference up to this point? Fascinating situation that Auburn might be in, but let's jump into what everybody is messaging folks and talking about no matter who it is, like the Xavier Atkins rumor and just, you know, if you totally unplugged throughout Auburn's bye week, props to you quickly. A message board thread started, originally stating that Xavier, let me preface this too, this is all speculation, all rumor at the time of us recording this on Sunday night, there is no reporting or anything tied to anything official. The Xavier Atkins stuff should, this all should be answered when Alex Golesh takes the podium to talk to the media later today at noon central for his normal scheduled presser. But all this rumor and speculation happened in response to a message board post that originally stated Xavier Atkins was removed from the team. He was no longer part of the Auburn football program. Since then, there's been some reporting that has been saying like, yeah, I don't think he's removed from the team. And the heavy speculation, once again, speculation is there might be some form of a suspension. And with some of this rumor and chatter tied to what we've seen so far this season, with him being benched at the beginning of the Florida game and all of that, like, okay, all right. Like that doesn't seem like the most massive stretch in the world. But Lindsay, if this goes on past 12-15 today, I think that is a miss by Alex Golesh. He has a chance to set it up in his opening statement. If not, it'll be the first question that he's asked. And that'll be, that should be that. Like, he should be able to address this head on him later today. Yeah, for a guy that's all about football, right? And only football. This is the kind of thing that is, has clearly, has distracted people. And I get a feeling he's not going to want to have that lingering over the program. I also don't expect him to want to answer a lot of questions about it. So I, probably whatever he says, that's the only thing we're going to get about it. And I imagine he's not going to answer a lot of questions going on. But yeah, it's, it's frustrating to hear that one of your defense's best players, a defense that's been struggling, you know, something's going on behind the scenes. We don't know what it is. I do also think this proves that creating message boards was a mistake that we are still atoning for. Nothing good comes out of a message board. But yeah, hopefully we can get this kind of nip in the bud because it's, I don't want to be in the news on an off week. We're supposed to be able to enjoy the weekend of games. And instead, we're having to worry about losing one of the team's best players. It's frustrating. Yeah, it is frustrating. And hopefully, you know, everything is happening internally and they work out what they need to work out, assuming there is something to work out. You know, shortly after this news broke and the rumor started, you know, Xavier Atkins posted on his Instagram story, you know, it was a picture of, you know, I was just reading the comments. Sounds like it was a resort or something. Yeah, I don't. I don't know. Like, I mean, it could have just been interesting timing. He could be being cryptic. I don't know. And look, that's something I've said about Xavier Atkins throughout all this is like, you know, quit responding to comments on Instagram, quit tweeting stuff. Like, just, you know, focus on leading this football team, because whether you're an official captain, an official leader, which he hasn't been up to this point, I don't think Elijah Melendez has. Even Elijah Melendez has defense in his room. But you're a guy that was brought back. And what we assume is a high NIL evaluation, right? An All-American a year ago. I think it's safe to assume that he's being paid amongst the top of the players and probably probably the top paid defender. I'm thinking through everything like, yeah, he's probably up there. So yeah, you know, it's okay for this coaching staff to demand certain things back in this day and age. Like you could dance around that a little bit before NIL, but now it's like, no, you're being paid to lead. You're being paid to be the best player on this defense. You're being paid to be one of the best players in the SEC based on you being an All-American a year ago and coming back. So you hate that there's any sort of like speculation tied to potential behavior, potential relationship. Once again, all speculation. But man, great. How great would it be if Alex Golesh, I'm not expecting this, but how great would it be if Alex Golesh didn't say anything about it in the opening statement? And then he was asked about it. And he's like, yeah, we heard that. We don't know where it's coming from. You know, we expect to see him out there against Georgia. Like, wouldn't that be great? I'm not expecting that to happen. But even if it is like a one game suspension, I do wonder if he'll tell us. Like, I do think that's an interesting aspect of like, I am curious about a public, this sort of decision, if there is one, once again, speculating. I do wonder how much info he will give us. I was about to say, I'm curious if we do find out it's some sort of suspension. Do we get any sort of backstory as to what happened? Right? I mean, I've seen, from what I understand, it's not correct. I saw something about there was like a grade or a GPA issue. I understand that wasn't correct. But is it a specific violation of a team rule? Is it something that's been building a disagreement? Is it like, what's the reason for it? And to your point, he's not a captain, but he's treated kind of, he's considered to be one of the leaders of the defense. And some of that's how much money he's making. And so I kind of do think that matters a little bit. I think the reason why matters. And I don't know if I would feel better or worse if I found out that he had some sort of acute situation, something where he did something wrong and this was a consequence of it, if in fact the suspension is what's going to happen, versus there's been some sort of simmering disagreement and it finally spilled over and that was the genesis for this, right? Like I'm trying to figure out, is there any scenario where I hear AG talk about there's going to be a one-game suspension and I'm like, oh, okay, that makes sense and I feel okay that everything's going to be fine and we can move on from this. And I think that's the hard part because I don't think we're going to get all that information. I don't think we're going to get enough detail on what's going on and will require on somebody to get a source and we'll get more sourced reporting versus an official declaration in the press conference today. Yeah, and both is fine. I just think if you're trying to eliminate distractions, go ahead and eliminate it. You have that opportunity because if something is happening, if there's some sort of internal suspension or anything like that, it's going to come to light. It's going to be discussed as it happens. Like, okay, he's either going to be out there or not at the start of the Georgia game. He's either going to play against Georgia or he's not. And then every week following, that's going to be a question that he's going to have to address like, all right, is he going to play this week? Will he play this week? So just go ahead and go ahead and discuss it, if there even is something to discuss. It'd be great if it, that wasn't the case, but once again, I don't think I'm expecting that today. I'm expecting him to address it in the opening statement, or if not, that'd be the first question he's asked about and him to kind of say a little bit as far as what we should expect to see from him, or he might leave it up in the air. Like, hey, you know, maybe you need to do something to prove it to the staff type deal, but we'll see. We'll see what happens. But yeah, it should be a very interesting presser later today. And yeah, we'll drop a show immediately when that's done. We will start recording and we will drop it as soon as we possibly can. So be on the lookout for that. Make sure you're subscribed on YouTube or on audio. Did we feel different watching a few of the games that happened on Saturday? And I'm going to contradict myself a little bit on this, but it's kind of hard not to. And I'll explain in just a moment right here. Unlocked On Auburn. 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Tell them it's game time. Download the Gametime app. Create an account. Use code LOCKDON, L-O-C-K-E-D-O-N. You get $20 off your first purchase. Terms apply. Again, create an account and redeem with code LOCKDON to get $20 off today. Lindsay Crosby hanging out with us. Thank you so much for making Locked On Auburn your first listen. Every single day for your second listen, go check out Locked On Auburn Hit. Two five-minute hits every single day from me, yours truly, about your Auburn Tigers. Lindsay, looking at all the SEC opponents that Auburn has faced so far this season, it's really hard. It's really hard to not feel different about Auburn's performance against those three teams. Florida gets blitzed for the second week in a row, this time to a South Carolina team that we all kind of agreed was towards the bottom quarter of the conference. Maybe that's not the case. We'll see. And just how, you know, discussions about, you know, how folks view both in Gainesville and throughout the SEC about John Somerall have shifted a little bit, probably a little bit of an overreaction, but still like that. That's the discussion right now. Tennessee struggled with Arkansas, kind of took them until late to take control of that football game. And that's interesting. One, because you just played against Tennessee and you feel like you had a chance to beat them. And then also Arkansas is the only other SEC team that I'm picking Auburn to beat right now. And they kind of did just as good of a job against Tennessee as you just did. So there's that aspect of it. And then Vandy, a team that you thought was going to be pretty good and arguably get better as the season went on with their freshman quarterback, got destroyed by Ole Miss. Of course, you just, Vandy is your SEC win right now. And then also you play Ole Miss in just a few weeks. So I mean, I think there's a lot of things there. And I say it all the time, like you can't get drawn into the transit of property of like who you play, the wins and losses in the SEC, but really in any level of sports. I just don't think you could do that. But man, after seeing this past weekend play out, it's kind of hard not to. And if you want to do that, I'm not going to blame you for it at all. Yeah, I'm the kind of person that, you know, I don't have as much time to watch college football on Saturdays during the NBA season. And so like Saturday was the first time I really had a chance, now that the Braves were limited, to sit down and watch a day of college football. And the thought that I had was like Florida didn't look like the team that beat Auburn. I mean, they, Jaden Ball, who was supposed to be this generationally great running back, had, you know, under 60 yards, like three and change a carry. And, you know, Lenora Sellers throwing the ball over the yard against them, and we scored points against them too. But it's, for me, it wasn't so much the whole transit of property thing as it was the way that some of these teams looked against these teams versus how they looked against us, right? And I think that was what concerned me, because Florida looked like a disaster. And I mean, they didn't have a touchdown after the first quarter until, until I think the fourth quarter. They just, they didn't look competitive. And to think about how much we struggled to try to contain them and ultimately could not give up 44 to them and think, well, South Carolina just gave up 19, right? And so I think it's, it's not so much the transitive property and it's like, oh, South Carolina would beat us. It's, man, Florida looked really bad, but we struggled with them as much as we did. Or, hey, Vanderbilt had no shot, but like we couldn't pull away from them that that easily in that game, right? Or it's, hey, you know, Tennessee looked like they were fighting to beat Arkansas, just like they fought to beat us. And I think that's what worries me a little bit about the back half of the schedule, because it's not like it's going to get easier for Auburn going forward. Yeah. And we don't know how good some of these teams are, but we get a little more information every week. And we talked about October being that gauntlet going into the season. And then once we played Florida and we played Vandy, it's like, okay, maybe the gauntlet started two weeks ago, or in this case now, three games ago. And then you see what happens this past weekend. Oh, maybe not. Or is it just an overreaction? I mean, ultimately, it doesn't matter, right? Like it doesn't matter. But goodness with everything happening right now and how you've looked through the first three games. And now, as we learn more about Bandy in Florida, in Tennessee, and then potentially Arkansas and Ole Miss, it gets tougher. I mean, I think Auburn's in a tough spot right now when you look at what's going up. And we knew that. We knew that. We knew that once October hit, you'd be fighting an uphill battle. And it certainly feels like you feel that even more now than ever. Yeah. The flip side of this that I want to ask about is we saw Kentucky take down LSU in overtime 35-34. And, you know, Sam Levitt wasn't bad, but he wasn't exactly the guy who could carry LSU to a win. And we saw LSU's running back room not really be able to kind of own a game like we know that they can do. Does that give you any hope for October 24th when you play them at 11 a.m. that, you know, hey, in Jordan-Hare in a day game, maybe like they're allergic to games during the day, them, you know, losing to Kentucky, does that make you feel a little bit better that Auburn can hang there in a game that we just assumed was a loss? Or is it because of how bad Florida looked and how bad, you know, Tennessee looked and Vandy and all that, they're probably still a level above us. Yeah, it does make me feel better, but I don't think it has anything to do with Kentucky. I've said when talking about this Auburn LSU matchup, I've said for so long, let's see what LSU is playing for at that point in the season. When they come to Jordan-Hare Stadium, it'll be their seventh straight weekend, seventh straight Saturday, I'm assuming they're all Saturdays, playing college football. Their bye week is after Auburn before they host Alabama. And that's tough. Like that's a tough world to be in for any football team, let alone one that is in college football playoff or bust mode. And they will now have two losses. What are they playing for? Everyone that Lane Kiffin brought in was playing for the college football playoff. And I just think they've got to know down deep that after Auburn, they have Alabama and Texas, and they go to Tennessee and then they face Arkansas. And it's just like, you're not, you're not, I don't, I don't think they're going to run the schedule there. So could they get in with two losses? Sure. But they've got to feel like they're in a tough spot to win their, they were in college football playoff or bus mode. The amount of money that they spent on this roster. And so to me, that one's not specifically about the talent. It's about the fact they lost. Yeah. Yeah. And what they're playing for and what their goals were and what versus what their current reality is. And also just like, you know, Lane Kiffin keeping a team together throughout all that. So what you're saying is before Auburn and Georgia kicks off on Saturday, we need to be watching Mississippi State and rooting for Mississippi State against LSU. Because if that team picks up a third loss, there's a very good chance they could just completely fall apart before they come to Auburn. Man, I just think Baton Rouge would turn on Lane Kiffin if that were to happen. And you know, you hate to see it, but even more than that, I think you'll love to see it. Yeah, I think most of college football would be okay with that for sure. I think college football is pulling for Mississippi State this weekend. I think you were correct on that. So yeah, worth monitoring 10,000%. But I got to tell you, Lindsay, Saturday night was an interesting experience. It was an interesting experience. And once again, like, I want to continue the conversation with what we've already kind of had, but with a different perspective of where we are right now. That's next right here. Unlocked On Auburn. Today's show brought to you by our friends over at FanDuel. FanDuel is America's number one sportsbook and the Auburn Tigers heading to Georgia. It opened at an 18 and a half point line for Auburn. It has now moved to 19. I think that grows. I think it's too low. I'm going to just be 100% honest with you. Georgia minus 19 and a half Auburn plus 19 and a half. Georgia over under at 49 and a half, which that's interesting. We'll talk about that over the course of the week, but you can get in on all the action over at FanDuel. Make this season your most rewarding season ever with FanDuel. Visit fanduel.com to get started. Today's show also brought to you by our friends over at Alumni Hall. We love Alumni Hall here at Locked On Auburn. And so many folks ask, like, hey, with different hats that I wear, like this one or different pullovers that I wear, folks ask, hey, where do you get that? 99.9% of the time, the answer is Alumni Hall. They've got two great physical locations, one in Opelika, one in Auburn. The Opelika one's in Tiger Town. The Auburn one is right off of College Street across from campus. Incredible selection. They also have everything available at alumnihall.com as well. So go give them some love and get ready for basketball season because we are close for Auburn basketball. So alumnihall.com, give them a look today. About a few minutes on today's edition of Locked On Auburn. We will drop a show after Alex Golesh's presser later today. We'll also drop something tonight as well. So staying true to three days a week here over at Locked On Auburn. So, man, I gotta tell you, Lindsay, watching your two biggest rivals play in that game they did Saturday, and I've talked about this before, and it always seems, you always seem to feel a little bit more on weekends where Auburn's not playing and there's a bye week, or maybe they play an 11 o'clock game and there's multiple big games at night. And it's just, you see the, I mean, you almost get envious of watching these other teams be in these big, massive moments. And we can lump LSU Kentucky into this as well, just from the perspective of Kentucky, like they've got a new coach. I mean, pretty similar situation, brand new look roster. And it's just, you have this massive opportunity and you find a way to pull it off. You find a way to execute. And then, you know, you turn on, you know, Alabama and Georgia, it's like obviously your two biggest rivals going at it to the point where like the level of competition of like what they're doing. I mean, it just doesn't look like anything close to what we put on the field on both sides of the football and just like the moment and the magnitude and like you see in certain guys, like really step up when the moment is so big. And that's just something we've been begging for for a long time. And we got like a brief taste of it when Eric Winters got the tackle against Baylor's like, okay, all right, that's somebody stepping up when the game's on the line. But man, just to see Alabama and Georgia and what they did Saturday night and those two heavyweights going at it, it's like, man, where are we? Where are we compared to that? And it's frustrating. And I mean, we'll see, right? We'll see what happens when Auburn goes to Athens on Saturday, and I hope they prove me wrong. I hope they prove me wrong. But man, it just feels like a few of those moments that we saw on Saturday, it's just like, I would love for Auburn to be in one of those scenarios. And it was a lot of different facets in that game too. Like there were moments when Georgia needed to convert a third down, and they got a pass in tight coverage to Craig Dandridge or London Humphreys or somebody, got the first down. There was the big plays. Jaden Rettel had that big 53-yard reception. There was the big runs, the impact defensive line play. It was the athletes looked to almost be at a different level. But then the way they were playing, quarterback spitting stuff into tight windows, running backs kind of putting the head down and getting an extra yard or two or making a man miss. And then seeing the play calling and seeing like, hey, a guy spring free and hands up being uncovered and you get the big play out of it. Just a lot of stuff that it felt like we don't have. And I don't mean as a slight to our roster, I don't mean as a slight to our coaches or our scheme or anything. But it just feels, the takeaway I had was it feels like Auburn has to scratch and fight and claw for every single yard and every single point and every single defensive stop in every single game. And there were moments in this game where you could just see really good athletes and a really good scheme with a really good quarterback, just making it look like it's a game. And I think that's the thing that I miss the most. It's not so much, hey, I want to be there. I just want to see Auburn be able to do it without having to sweat and claw and fight for every individual yard. I think that's the thing that struck me the most to me. Yeah, I mean, we said that for a long time that Auburn makes offense look, it makes, Auburn makes offense look hard. Yeah, it makes it look so difficult. We've seen glimpses this year where the offense has looked better, but it takes so long to get going. I saw a stat, I meant to screenshot it so I could refer back to it, and I'm sure it will come up again. But Georgia, I think their point differential leads college football and points in the first quarter. Now, I'm as high on Georgia as anybody. I think they're the best team in college football and people finally agree. I think they're ranked number one today, which they should be. They are. But they did face some teams that they should have been able to run the score up against early in the year. That was the big thing. Okay, well, George hasn't played anybody. Now they have and they clearly look good. So I do think that stat's not as like, I think it's a little more dramatic than what's actually there. But still, it's very clear that Auburn needs to start fast. And we're gonna say that every week, Lindsay, until they do it. And then after they do it, we're gonna say they need to do that again. Because they just haven't figured that out yet. That is not something Alex Golesh, he has not cracked the code on how to start fast offensively here at Auburn yet. And this would be an awesome week. Coming out of a bye week, this would be an awesome week for him to do it. That'd be great. That'd be really, really awesome. I was saying this as a joke a few weeks ago, but listen, Gus Malzahn was so good at scripting the opening drive. He's in town, man. Just have, like, Gus, we just need 15 plays. Here's the playbook, give me 15 plays you think will work against Georgia. We'll take it from there. That's what we need. And it's frustrating how, like, you can see, if you can just take little pieces from him and from AG, ignore the guys in the middle, then you could fix a lot of the problems with the current Auburn program and the current Auburn roster and scheme. But you had to know, it's just getting that positive momentum. I think at the end of the day, what I'm talking about is just feeling, having positive feelings because they're able to get a little bit of momentum in a drive, in a series, in a game, in the season. They're just able to get some stuff done and build from week to week. And I feel like every single week, you're just starting over from scratch at trying to figure out how to generate offense. And it's frustrating. Yeah, and just find a way to generate belief in a game like this on Saturday against the number one team in the country. You need belief. And where does that come from? I think it comes from the guy that you brought with you to be the face of the program for a year, Byrum Brown, your quarterback, and saying, all right, we need to believe in you. Show us that we can. This is why you came to Auburn. You wanted to prove yourself in this type of environment, in this kind of moment. This is it. Prove it to us. Prove it to the NFL. Sure. Sure, that'd be great. Prove it to everybody. Yeah. All right, we'll talk about this game a ton this week. And of course, we will be back this afternoon to talk about what Golesh said at his presser. So don't miss that. Lindsay Crosby, how can people check out everything you've got going on? I'm on social media at Crosby Baseball. We're getting ready for Auburn's in fall baseball right now. So we've got that going on. Obviously, the Latin Brave season is over. We're talking about that a lot over at bravesoday.com and on the Brave City Podcast. But again, at Crosby Baseball, we're going to drop everything from college baseball to pro to Braves. Please like the video. Please subscribe. If you're tuned on audio, please subscribe and leave us a review and we'll see you next time. This has been Locked On Auburn. Hey, it's Isaac Shade, your host of Amazon Fire TV's College Football Kickoff. Join Kenyon Barner, Jesse Holly, myself, and the local hosts of the Locked On Podcast Network each week on Fire TV throughout the season to preview the biggest matchups across college football. Search College Football Kickoff on the Fire TV app.