The 2024 season will be Hugh Freeze's second year on the Plains as Auburn football's head coach. The Tigers finished 6-7 in 2023, failing to win their last game in the Music City Bowl. That record also gave the Tigers their fourth consecutive season finishing unranked. Freeze will look to increase the Tigers' win total next season, which may get some help from their transfer portal class.
If Freeze is looking to rebuild the Auburn football program, it's difficult to see how he's doing much of it through the transfer portal. Auburn's 2024 transfer portal winter cycle finished ranked as the 39th best in the country. They'll be bringing in nine commits while sending out 14. Among those nine are eight three-star transfers and only one four-star.
Auburn football's 2024 transfer class is nowhere near comparable to their 2023 class, Freeze's first year as the Tigers' head coach. Hoping to rebuild the Auburn football program quickly, not to mention a likely exodus due to a coaching change, Freeze was able to grab 20 incoming transfers, with 21 going out. Eight of those were three-star players, while a whopping 11 were four-stars, the most in the top-50.
It's not unusual that the longer coaches stay at a program, the less they dive into the transfer portal. But again, this is just Freeze's second year, where there's likely a lot of the rebuild set to take place, where portal players could have drastically helped out. With just under half the players transferring in compared to last season, that just doesn't seem to be the route Freeze is going this year, mainly focusing on absolute needs.
Out of the nine transfers, four players are on offense (2 WR's, 1 TE, 1 OT), and five are on defense (1 LB, 1 DL, 1 S, 1 CB). This list did put Auburn football on The Athletic's Manny Navarro's SEC transfer portal “winners list,” however. That's likely because of those players, including Georgia State wideout Robert Lewis.
Robert Lewis transfers to Auburn football
Robert Lewis was actually Freeze and Auburn's first commit of the 2024 cycle. The original three-star prospect was originally the No. 208 overall player in the Class of 2019, and No. 142 player in the state of Georgia. As a transfer, he still rated as a three-star, ranked the No. 184 overall player, and No. 35 wide receiver, according to 247sports.
In three seasons of play at Georgia State, he totaled 102 receptions for 1,323 yards at 13 yards per reception for 14 touchdowns. He had his best season last year with the Panthers, catching 70 passes for 877 yards and seven touchdowns.
His standout performance last season was against Charlotte, where his skills were put on full display. That day he hauled in six passes for 220 yards and two touchdowns.
With Auburn needing some help in their receiver room — their passing game was beyond abysmal last season — Lewis could end up being the sneakiest transfer portal pickup for the Tigers in 2024.
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