How Malcolm Simmons has made a freaky-fast first impression

He might have been the overlooked one of the "Freeze Four," but now everybody is talking about the super athlete from Alex City.

WR Malcolm Simmons (Austin Perryman/Auburn Tigers)

Somebody seems to have forgotten to tell Malcolm Simmons that he wasn’t supposed to be doing this right now.

Instant impact as a true freshman? Sure, any one of them, theoretically, has a shot at that in the preseason.

Those expectations were placed on Cam Coleman, the 5-star phenom from nearby Phenix City. He was the one who turned heads from the moment he stepped onto the practice field at Auburn, and he was the one who became the first true freshman to win the Offensive MVP Award at the annual A-Day Game.

There are some of those hopes and dreams placed on Perry Thompson, the near-5-star receiver from the Mobile area who simply looks too explosive for someone of his 6-foot-3 and nearly 230-pound frame. Thompson was the wide receiver pickup at Big Cat Weekend last year that prompted Hugh Freeze to be thrown into a pool.

And it wouldn’t be out of place to put some of that hype behind Bryce Cain, another Mobile area product who was an early enrollee with Coleman. During spring practices, he grabbed plenty of attention with his elite speed, and he got a head start on working with Payton Thorne and the rest of the Tigers’ 2024 offense.

But Simmons? He didn’t have a top-100 rating or an All-American Game invitation next to his name as a recruit. He didn’t enroll early, either, seemingly putting him behind the eight ball for early playing time in a room that added three veteran FBS transfers at wide receiver this offseason.

Simmons was a member of the famed “Freeze Four,” yet he didn’t have the same amount of fanfare as the others. He was a local recruiting win like Coleman, playing less than 45 minutes away from Auburn’s campus at Benjamin Russell in Alex City. He was also a Big Cat Weekend win like Thompson, committing to the Tigers last July.

As a summer arrival, it would be naturally more difficult for Simmons to earn a role right away. He had to play catch-up in the playbook, and he didn’t have the ultra-elite recruiting buzz that usually accompanies these breakout picks.

Right?

Wrong, judging by what’s happened over the first two weeks of fall camp at Auburn.