Young receivers highlight added excitement to Auburn passing game in 2024

Of all the newcomers Auburn football will introduce in the 2024 season, few position groups seem to have as much promise as the wide receiver core.

It’s a group that badly needed a boost after last season’s passing offense ranked last in the SEC.

Auburn attacked that position hard both in high school recruiting and the transfer portal, but no addition stood out more than five-star freshman Cam Coleman.

Coleman was initially committed to Texas A&M, but the Phenix City, Alabama, native flipped his commitment to Auburn two weeks after Texas A&M fired head coach Jimbo Fisher.

Coleman enrolled early at Auburn, going through spring practice where he already began to turn heads.

“Cam Coleman just makes us look different,” Hugh Freeze said in his first press conference of spring camp on Feb. 29. “Can’t tell you how excited I am about him… When you watch him run around out there, we’ve improved ourselves. He’s naturally gifted.”

Coleman was one of four blue-chip freshmen receivers Auburn signed, along with Perry Thompson, Malcolm Simmons and Bryce Cain.

Freeze wasn’t the only one to rave about Coleman either.

“He brings a lot. He brings speed. He brings a great ability to jump, and those are just his physical abilities,” said Auburn quarterback Payton Thorne. “I can’t wait to be on the field with him.”

Cain was the only other freshman receiver from the class to go through spring practice. A four-star recruit from Mobile, Alabama, Cain was ranked as the No. 192 overall player in the 2024 class, according to the 247Sports composite rankings.

To round out the group, Auburn signed three receivers out of the transfer portal in Sam Jackson V, KeAndre Lambert-Smith and Robert Lewis.

Lewis and Lambert-Smith both bring a lot of experience at receiver to the group and Jackson, a former quarterback turned receiver, brings familiarity with Thorne, having played with him in high school.

Lambert-Smith got especially high praise praise from Thorne at SEC Media Days.

“He’s even better than I thought he was and I thought he was good when he got here,” Thorne said.

Freeze also commented on what the addition of Lambert-Smith means for Thorne and the offense.

“There’s no doubt that he feels really good about Dre. The workouts I see, I can see why,” Freeze said at SEC Media Days on Thursday.

Lambert-Smith played four seasons at Penn State, with his best coming last season where he caught 53 passes for 673 yards and four touchdowns.

The receiver room went through a complete overhaul over the offseason with transfer portal departures and new additions, but returns leading pass catcher Rivaldo Fairweather in 2024.

The group will look to help repair a passing offense that only averaged 162.2 yards per game through the air last season.