Meet the two most intriguing additions to Auburn football's 2025 roster

Raion Strader and Rayshawn Pleasant don't fit the mold of what the Tigers have been recruiting. That's why you should watch out for them.

(Austin Perryman/Auburn Tigers)

AUBURN — Hugh Freeze has made it quite clear that recruiting — and specifically high school recruiting — has been the centerpiece of his plan to get Auburn football back to championship contention.

While the Tigers’ on-field results haven’t been up to usual expectations during the first two seasons of Freeze’s tenure, they can at least point to the off-field victories. Freeze and his staff salvaged a top-20 class in their first month on the job, then followed it up with back-to-back top-10 hauls in their first two full cycles.

Since Freeze’s arrival on the Plains, Auburn has signed 43 composite blue-chip recruits. This is not the talent-depleted program that it was just a few short years ago. Former high school standouts such as Keldric Faulk, Kayin Lee, Cam Coleman, Malcolm Simmons, Kaleb Harris, Jay Crawford and Connor Lew are set to be among the Tigers’ best weapons this fall.

Even though signing, retaining and developing high schoolers is the best way to build a title-worthy program in college football, the current era demands usage of the transfer portal. Since players can freely move between programs without penalty, landing transfers can speed up a rebuild or take a strong roster to the next level.

Among the options in the transfer portal, the players who were starter-quality at other power-conference programs are usually your best bets. Last year, Auburn’s top wide receiver came from Penn State (KeAndre Lambert-Smith) and one of its biggest impact defenders came from Duke (Dorian Mausi).

The Tigers went that route again in this past portal cycle, grabbing a top-rated wide receiver from Georgia Tech (Eric Singleton Jr.) along with two projected starting offensive tackles from Virginia Tech (Xavier Chaplin) and USC (Mason Murphy).

And that’s what makes the subjects of today’s Observer newsletter even more intriguing — they don’t fit into either camp of player that Auburn is prioritizing.

Even before the coaching change at the end of the 2022 season, Auburn was in the business of loading up its secondary. It’s been the Tigers’ best and most stable position group for the past decade, producing a strong number of NFL Draft picks.

Then Lee and Sylvester Smith, along with JUCO standout Champ Anthony, signed in Freeze’s abbreviated first class. A year later, Auburn found instant starters in Crawford and Harris, along with other blue-chip pieces such as A’mon Lane-Ganus. The 2025 class landed a pair of elite safeties in Anquon Fegans and Eric Winters, along with composite 4-star corners Blake Woodby and Donovan Starr.

Lee and Crawford were far and away Auburn’s top two cornerbacks in 2024, and both of them returned to the program for the 2025 season. There was quality depth behind them, too — in addition to whatever they would get from the likes of Woodby and Starr right away. In fact, Auburn saw several cornerbacks leave in the spring window, partially because of what they had seen from the newcomers in spring ball.

But that still didn’t stop Auburn from signing Miami-Ohio transfer Raion Strader in the first window and Tulane transfer Rayshawn Pleasant in the second window.

You don’t have to be an expert in all things college football to know that Miami-Ohio and Tulane aren’t power-conference programs — although the latter was once in the SEC, during the prehistoric days for the sport.

And neither were blue-chip recruits who had to drop down a level to get playing time. Pleasant was the No. 1376 player in the country and outside the top 100 overall for athletes in the Class of 2022. Strader got a 2-star rating from 247 Sports and didn’t have a composite grade coming out of high school. Miami-Ohio was the only school listed on his prospect page.

So how does an SEC program intensely focused on bringing in the biggest and brightest talents from the high school ranks and the transfer portal end up with two players — at a position of great depth, unlike the later finds Auburn had to land on the defensive line in the second window — from such humble beginnings?

Again, that’s what makes these two players so intriguing. Here’s what you need to know about this cornerback duo.