What Auburn football is getting in 5-star 2024 LB Demarcus Riddick

The Tigers have scored a major recruiting win over Alabama and Georgia, landing their highest-rated recruit since Owen Pappoe.

5-star LB Demarcus Riddick (Instagram)

It’s fitting that Auburn snatched a Chilton County product away from the Peach State.

On Wednesday afternoon, Auburn’s first-year coaching staff made its biggest recruiting splash to date by flipping 5-star 2024 linebacker Demarcus Riddick from Georgia.

Riddick, a 6-foot-2 athlete from Chilton County High School in Clanton, had been committed to play for the back-to-back national champions since last November. But, in the last several months, Riddick’s recruitment basically became an in-state battle between Alabama and Auburn.

And Riddick was a frequent visitor to the Plains, coming for Junior Day in January and two unofficial visits in March and April before his official visit last month.

By getting the commitment of Riddick, Auburn has now scored a rare massive recruiting victory over both of its biggest rivals.

Riddick carries a composite 5-star ranking both on 247Sports and On3, despite not getting a fifth star from any of the four major recruiting services. But when everybody has you as an extremely high 4-star, the composite math really works out in your favor: Riddick is currently listed as the No. 26 overall prospect and the No. 3 overall linebacker for 2024.

He’s quite the haul for head coach Hugh Freeze and linebackers coach Josh Aldridge, who both were at Liberty last season and signed up to face the ultimate recruiting challenge in the SEC.

If Riddick remains a composite 5-star prospect and eventually signs with Auburn, he’ll be the Tigers’ first since Owen Pappoe in the Class of 2019. He also has Auburn’s highest composite score for a commitment (0.9866) since Pappoe, and he would rank inside the top 15 highest-rated recruits for the Tigers in the modern rankings era.

That’s also fitting, considering Riddick is also an extremely athletic linebacker who has tremendous positional versatility. Riddick just has a couple of inches on Pappoe — with plenty of room to add bulk to his frame.

But while Pappoe made a name for himself at a powerhouse Georgia high school by smashing national athletic testing records, Riddick has become a standout at lesser-known Chilton County with plays that you have to see to believe.