What are realistic expectations for Cam Coleman?
How do elite 5-star receivers usually perform as true freshmen? Let's take a look at the last 25 — including one of Hugh Freeze's.
WR Cam Coleman (Austin Perryman/Auburn Tigers)
Cam Coleman wasn’t at SEC Media Days in Dallas last week. But he still was one of the most talked-about — if not the most talked-about — Auburn players during the event.
It’s rare for a true freshman to get brought up just as much as a returning starter at quarterback, especially if said quarterback is actually there, going through interviews.
It’s also rare for defensive players to get asked about their teammates on offense this much, especially if they rarely cross paths with them in practices.
Linemen will talk about other linemen. Linebackers will talk about offensive backs and vice versa. Receivers and defensive backs get asked about one another.
In addition to starting quarterback Payton Thorne, Auburn took a defensive end (Keldric Faulk) and an inside linebacker (Eugene Asante) to SEC Media Days. Yet both of them gave some of the best answers on the Tigers’ freshman phenom.
“You could tell from the first practice to the end of spring how developed his game was,” Faulk said. “He was already a pretty good player, but by the end of the spring, he looked really good.”
“Cam Coleman is a dynamic player,” Asante added. “He's so dynamic in the way he plays the game, in terms of high-pointing the football. He is somebody that's fast in terms of taking off the top of the defense.”
Few Auburn true freshmen have received nearly as much hype as Coleman before playing a single snap of college football.
And there’s a good reason for that: Coleman is the highest-rated offensive signee in program history, coming in as the nation’s No. 3 overall prospect in the 247Sports Composite for the Class of 2024.
“He brings a lot,” Thorne said. “He brings speed. He brings a great ability to jump, and those are just his physical abilities.”
For a program that has battled through a rough stretch of three straight losing seasons, Auburn caught a fortunate break and was able to make its relentless recruiting work pay off in landing Coleman.
The 6-foot-3 Coleman was a superstar in Auburn’s own backyard, starring for former Tigers quarterback Patrick Nix at Central-Phenix City High School. The Red Devils have produced an impressive number of high-caliber receivers over the years — such as Justyn Ross, J.D. McKissic, Karmello English, E.J. Williams and Jackson Meeks — but none of them ended up at Auburn out of high school.
That was going to be the case with Coleman, who committed to Texas A&M last summer but ultimately decided to stay close to home after the Aggies made the very costly decision to fire Jimbo Fisher. If Fisher was still in College Station, there’s a good chance Coleman would be an Aggie this year.
Instead, Auburn was able to pull off the high-profile flip last winter, snatching an elite talent who had 1,372 receiving yards and 18 touchdowns as a senior in the biggest and most competitive region of Alabama high school football.
As Faulk said, it didn’t take long for Coleman to stick out on the practice field as an early enrollee. He commanded attention from the very first set of drills, and that continued all the way to a show-stopping A-Day Offensive MVP performance — where he became the first true freshman to ever win that award.
Coleman is the top headliner of Auburn’s 2024 wide receiver class, which also landed high 4-star Perry Thompson along with fellow blue-chippers Bryce Cain and Malcolm Simmons. (Coleman and Cain participated in spring practices, while Thompson and Simmons arrived this summer.) It was an all-Alabama class for the ages, immediately breathing new life into a wide receiver room that hadn’t produced at a high level in quite some time.
For head coach Hugh Freeze, Coleman and Co. are exactly the type of talents he wanted to bring into Auburn as part of its much-needed offensive rebuild. He knows the hype train is barreling down the tracks for his freshmen — especially Coleman — but he doesn’t want it to get out of control.
“I'm careful not to put too unrealistic of expectations on freshmen,” Freeze said last week. “I think we had the No. 1 receiving class in the country in Cam, Perry, Bryce and Malcolm. I love all four of them. Cam went through spring, so I have more feel for who he is, and he's going to have to play. He's really, really talented.
“I've signed a lot of NFL receivers through my time, not all were ready were completely ready. I want to be careful not to put weight on their shoulders.”
Coleman is a top-of-the-line talent, and that has come with some unprecedented expectations from inside Auburn’s fan base about what he could do in 2024.
But what is realistic for Coleman — who is remarkably young for his class, as he was still 17 years old when he went through spring ball?