Auburn's offensive line rebuild is unlike any other in the transfer portal era

According to the 247Sports rankings, no team has ever landed three 4-star offensive line transfers in the same class — until now, that is.

OT Dillon Wade (@Icey_Wade/Twitter)

For years, Auburn has needed offensive linemen. Desperately.

If there was one major, tangible reason why Gus Malzahn lost his job as the Tigers’ head coach, it is probably the fact that his last few years were marked by weak recruiting and development up front.

The short-lived Bryan Harsin era didn’t feature any improvement in that department, either. The Tigers signed a pair of composite 3-star high school linemen in Colby Smith and Garner Langlo in the 2021 class, then only added local 4-star E.J. Harris in the 2022 class.

Harsin and his staff kicked the can down the road as far as possible, bringing back fifth- and sixth-year seniors to make it through the 2022 season. But Harsin was fired before the end of the campaign, and six veteran offensive linemen were soon out of eligibility. On top of that, starting guard Keiondre Jones entered the portal during the coaching change.

The offensive line is unlike any other position group in football. It’s the hardest to evaluate, as evidenced by the higher number of blue-chip recruits who don’t pan out and the higher number of 3-stars and small-school standouts who go on to become All-Americans or top NFL prospects up front.

It’s also the hardest for players to come in and perform right away. Freshmen starting on the offensive line is rare, especially in the SEC. It’s not nearly as plug-and-play as the rest of the roster, and it usually takes linemen multiple years of development before they can be turned loose at this level.

Whenever the recruiting numbers aren’t there along the line of scrimmage, it creates a unique — and dangerous — problem. You can’t just grab high schoolers to fill in for you quickly on the offensive line, and years of misses turn into years of a thin roster, both in development and depth.

The quick fix is the transfer portal. With players now being able to play immediately at their next school, grabbing transfers is the only real way to course-correct on the offensive line for the near future.

But it seemed like Auburn had too many holes up front. Getting one high-value transfer along the offensive line is a big win, because virtually every school wants them in the portal. Landing two is extremely rare.

More than that? Well, it felt impossible. That is, until Auburn went on its current tear in the portal.

In the past month, Auburn has landed three offensive line transfers who are ranked as blue-chip, 4-star prospects by 247Sports — Tulsa tackle Dillon Wade, Western Kentucky tackle Gunner Britton and East Carolina center Avery Jones.

For the 2023 cycle, 247Sports has rated only 14 offensive line transfers as 4-stars. (That ought to tell you about the scarcity and value of the position.) Only four schools have commitments from multiple 4-star offensive line transfers.

Auburn is the only one with three. And, according to 247’s database, Auburn is the only program in the transfer portal era to have three 4-star offensive line transfers in a single class.

Simply put: What the Tigers are doing with their offensive line rebuild is unprecedented.