The on-field product wasn’t the only thing that fell apart during Bryan Harsin’s disastrous tenure at Auburn. The Tigers’ recruiting efforts were well behind those of their peers and biggest rivals.

At the time of Harsin’s firing on Halloween, Auburn’s 2023 recruiting class was ranked 55th in the nation and 13th out of 14 SEC programs, according to the 247Sports Composite team rankings. It was a precipitous fall for Auburn on the recruiting trail under Harsin, and a steep climb for the program after his departure.

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Yet in the three months since Harsin’s firing, Auburn’s coaching staff — first the interim staff under Cadillac Williams and then the new staff under Hugh Freeze — worked tirelessly to make up ground with the 2023 class and through the transfer portal. When the dust settled on National Signing Day last week, Auburn finished with the nation’s No. 17 signing class and a transfer haul that ranked fourth in the country.

“There’s no more important thing (than recruiting),” Freeze said. “I would love to say that I knew our team better, but the current roster demanded that we hit it hard. I just wasn’t afforded the opportunity to sit in the office and do anything else other than recruit. So, we hit it hard…. It’s hard to really say how much we closed the gap on the teams that you’re trying to catch, but I do believe that we improved ourselves.”

That improvement took a concerted effort from Auburn’s staff over those three months — from on-field coaches to personnel staff and the Tigers’ recruiting office, it was an all-hands-on-deck endeavor to salvage the 2023 class and restock the cupboard heading into Freeze’s first season as head coach.

That effort began in earnest as soon as Harsin was out the door and Auburn’s staff experienced an in-season shakeup. Williams was elevated to interim head coach, and with a shorthanded and restructured staff, the Tigers worked to make the most of the final month of the regular season. It was a four-week stretch that included two games at Jordan-Hare Stadium, the first of which was an instantly memorable gameday atmosphere against Texas A&M.

During that final month of the regular season, Williams and Co. worked to hold the class together while also getting a couple of key additions. Auburn picked up commitments from four-star defensive lineman Darron Reed and three-star edge defender Brenton Williams. Reed, a top-200 recruit in the 2023 class, flipped from LSU the week of the Iron Bowl. Williams, a local prospect from Opelika, committed just hours before Freeze was hired as Auburn’s next coach on Nov. 28.

“Honestly, Auburn is a special, special place, and I think those four weeks of getting kids here on campus, letting them see that gameday atmosphere and us getting that push on the national level — even though we were a 5-7 team — (helped),” Williams said.

After Freeze took over as head coach, he made recruiting his top priority, even as he worked to quickly assemble his inaugural staff on the Plains. Time was of the essence, with just more than three weeks between Freeze’s hiring and the start of the early signing period on Dec. 21.

“It’s been some sleepless nights,” said defensive backs coach Zac Etheridge, one of the only holdovers from the previous staff. “I mean, we’ve been on the road, we’ve been in a lot of schools, we’ve been all over, and we just been getting out…. This is what you signed up to do. This is what you love. You get a chance to meet new people. You get a chance to talk about Auburn, what you truly love. So, it’s not been a job. It’s been fun and we’re excited about the results.”

Those results started to show in the days leading up to the early signing period. On Dec. 11, Auburn flipped four-star cornerback Colton Hood from Michigan State and three-star offensive tackle Tyler Johnson from Texas Tech following their official visits to the Plains. Two days later, the staff flipped four-star center Connor Lew from Miami.

The Sunday before the December signing period, Auburn picked up commitments from four-star safety Sylvester Smith and three-star defensive lineman Stephen Johnson, who flipped from Arkansas, as well as FIU tight end transfer Rivaldo Fairweather. Then on the eve of signing day, the Tigers added commitments from three-star quarterback Hank Brown, who was previously committed to Freeze at Liberty; three-star JUCO defensive lineman Quientrail Jamison-Travis; three-star JUCO offensive tackle Izavion Miller and Vanderbilt edge transfer Elijah McAllister.

Another wave came at the start of the early signing period. Auburn landed its two highest-rated recruits in the 2023 class, flipping four-star defensive lineman Keldric Faulk from Florida State and four-star cornerback Kayin Lee from Ohio State.

By the end of the day, Auburn was up to No. 19 in the 247Sports Composite team rankings, and that was before All-America cornerback Tyler Scott announced his commitment on Jan. 7 (though he signed with Auburn prior to going public with his decision) and three-star corner C.J. Johnson a day later.

It required quite the sprint to the finish line to make the move 36 spots up in the rankings after Harsin’s firing. While that surge overlapped with the beginning of the first transfer window, the flurry of activity paled in comparison to the frenzied push from Freeze and his staff during that 45-day transfer window.

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While Freeze said at his introductory press conference that he wanted high school recruiting to be the foundation of what he builds at Auburn, he acknowledged the need to lean heavily into the transfer portal in Year 1.

Auburn’s staff treated that 45-day window with a sense of urgency, adding a dozen transfers and retaining a couple of players — defensive lineman Zykeivous Walker and wide receiver Tar’Varish Dawson Jr. — who previously opted to transfer during Harsin’s tenure.

“I kind of feel like you’re at an auction that’s going three times faster than it’s supposed to,” defensive coordinator Ron Roberts said. “…You just kind of had to dive in with two feet and keep rolling, remain flexible day to day.”

Auburn’s staff closely monitored the transfer portal and moved quickly when possible fits became available. The biggest area the Tigers wanted to address was the line of scrimmage, so they prioritized the offensive and defensive lines.

Offensively, it was a push for a rapid rebuild and replenishing of the numbers in the trenches. Although Auburn already signed five offensive linemen — four high school recruits and a JUCO prospect — the work wasn’t done in trying to hit Freeze’s desired number of 16 linemen on scholarship.

“With the transfer portal and how competitive it is, it’s certainly a challenge, but a challenge that I was excited about,” offensive line coach Jake Thornton said. “This is not my first O-line having to rebuild. You know, this is the biggest one I’ve had to rebuild, but at Tennessee Tech and Gardner Webb, those two places were in similar situations where I had to go rebuild.”

First, Auburn added four-star offensive tackle transfer Dillon Wade, who played for new Tigers offensive coordinator Philip Montgomery when he was head coach at Tulsa. A couple weeks later, the program added another bookend piece to the line with four-star Western Kentucky offensive tackle transfer Gunner Britton. The final addition to the offensive line came Jan. 10, when four-star ECU transfer Avery Jones flipped from Illinois, providing Auburn with an experienced potential starter at center.

“Some of those challenges were very daunting, truthfully,” Freeze said. “I don’t remember a time in my whole career where we felt like we had to sign nine offensive linemen. I mean, that’s unheard of to try to get to your 16 number. That’s a big challenge…. There was just no way around it. We had to get after it.”

On the other side of the line of scrimmage, Auburn needed reinforcements after losing Derick Hall, Eku Leota and Colby Wooden, among others along the defensive line. The Tigers were set to return just seven defensive linemen from last season, with only a few key contributors returning to the fold. While Auburn signed five in the 2023 class, experience and — perhaps more importantly — immediate depth were needed up front for the Tigers to be able to accomplish what they felt necessary in spring practice and throughout the offseason.

Auburn found that in a foursome of Power 5 transfers: the aforementioned McAllister, former Kentucky defensive tackle Justin Rogers, former Maryland defensive lineman Mosiah Nasili-Kite and former Purdue defensive lineman Lawrence Johnson.

“As we looked at adding veteran pieces to that, we wanted guys with experience that weren’t afraid of work,” defensive line coach Jeremy Garrett said. “We signed one-year guys, so guys that aren’t afraid of competing and were saying, ‘let’s compete to be in the rotation.’ I think that was critical for us to add.”

Auburn addressed other needs at linebacker, adding a pair of SEC transfers in DeMario Tolan (LSU) and Austin Keys (Ole Miss), as well as at the offensive skill positions. The Tigers added Cincinnati wide receiver transfer Nick Mardner (who previously played for position coach Marcus Davis at Hawaii in 2021), South Florida running back transfer Brian Battie (a consensus All-America return specialist in 2021) and Fairweather, the former FIU tight end.

According to Roberts, there were days when Auburn wasn’t sure it was going to get any big wins in the transfer portal. By the time the window closed, the Tigers got 12 of them, even if there were some misses along the way.

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“That was wild,” Williams said of the transfer window. “I mean, each and every day — it’s a transfer guy in here, it’s just coming like hotcakes. It was something that, at times, was very, very tiring, but it was part of the job, and we know that to flip this roster like that, it’s what we were going to have to do and within the guidelines of where we had an opportunity to really get some guys in here to get us headed in the right direction.

“It was a crazy time, but man, I thought as coaches — for us not really knowing each other, and working together, I thought it was an absolutely awesome job that the staff and Coach Freeze have done in a short period of time.”

There are still some roster needs for Auburn to address during the May transfer window, with Freeze potentially still looking to add a quarterback from the portal, as well as a need for more depth off the edge. While Auburn will surely regret not capitalizing more on a historically deep class of in-state talent in 2023, it’s difficult to not acknowledge just how much ground Auburn has been able to make up on the recruiting front since the end of Harsin’s tenure.

“I’m not really surprised because I saw the first day Coach Freeze got the job, he hit the ground recruiting,” Etheridge said. “…I’m not surprised by any means about what we’ve been able to do and really excited about what the future holds in terms of once we get a full calendar year to go recruit as his staff, things are going to be really exciting to see.”

Tom Green is an Auburn beat reporter for Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter @Tomas_Verde.