AUBURN — Could Auburn football have drawn up a better Big Cat Weekend?

That's a rhetorical question, of course. Things could always be better. Would coach Hugh Freeze like to have a quarterback committed in the Class of 2025 by this point? Of course. Would the Tigers have loved to add a pledge from a five-star recruit Saturday? Certainly, especially given the fact that someone such as Ohio State commit Na'eem Offord, rated by the 247Sports Composite as the No. 7 player in the country, was on campus.

But by all reasonable metrics, Auburn had a stellar Big Cat.

The Tigers left with five new commitments — two in 2025 and three in 2026 — including a former Alabama pledge in four-star defensive lineman Antonio Coleman, who flipped back to Auburn to put an exclamation point on the day's events.

Nabbing a prospect from Alabama will always be good news for Tigers fans, but when looking at the 247Sports Composite rankings, Coleman shouldn't be the recruit drawing the most attention. The former Alabama pledge has a composite rating of .9380, which puts him near elite territory. Despite that, however, the other four new commits are rated higher.

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The highest rated of the bunch is 2026 edge defender Hezekiah Harris, who got the commitment party started in the morning before Big Cat even officially began. Harris is a four-star prospect, and his composite score of .9824 makes him the No. 30 player in 2026 and the second highest-rated recruit the Tigers have landed during the Freeze Era.

Four-star linebackers Shadarius Toodle and JaMichael Garrett followed Harris as commitments, bringing Auburn's total numbers of pledges in 2026 to five. Toodle is tabbed as the No. 67 player in the class, and Garrett is rated as the No. 119 prospect.

Harris, Toodle and Garrett are all in-state recruits, attending Jemison High School, Cottage Hill Christian Academy and Gulf Shores High School, respectively. Harris is the No. 2 player in Alabama, sitting behind only edge defender Anthony Jones, who was also on campus for Big Cat on Saturday; 247Sports national recruiting analyst Tom Loy has a prediction in for Jones to land at Auburn.

Toodle is the No. 4 player in the state, and Garrett is No. 7. The only other 2026 top-10 player in Alabama who is committed to a school is four-star safety Jamarrion Gordon, who sits at No. 10 and flipped his pledge from the Crimson Tide to UCF on Friday.

Auburn is tied with Florida State with the most committed 2026 recruits in the country at five, but its team score from 247Sports of 116.91 is slightly above where the Seminoles sit at 113.94. Amongst the 19 teams that have at least three commits, Auburn (94.14) ranks No. 3 behind Penn State (96.47) and Oklahoma (94.47) in average commit rating.

Big Cat's actual events began when recruits, dozens of them in the Class of 2025 and 2026, checked in and met with the coaching staff. Part of the fun included Blake Woodby, a four-star cornerback tabbed as the No. 100 recruit in the Class of 2025, announcing his commitment in front of the attendees.

"It's just the people. I don't know how to explain it," Woodby said through a microphone on the indoor practice field of the Woltosz Football Performance Center. "But I ain't going to hold y'all up too much. I just wanted to get up here and say I'm committed to the Auburn Tigers."

Freeze was the first to congratulate Woodby with a handshake and hug.

The day continued with a scavenger hunt that featured separate teams going around campus and hitting various checkpoints. Members of the teams, including Garrett and Woodby, posed for group selfies throughout the race and posted them to social media with the hashtag "#BigCat2024."

Saturday's fireworks may be a preview for more to come, specifically in 2025. Four-star safety Anquon Fegans was in attendance, and his commitment is set for Monday. Four-star edge defender Jared Smith was there as well, and he's scheduled to announce a pledge Aug. 3.

If the Tigers were to land both Fegans and Smith and everything else around the country remained the same, Auburn would have the nation's No. 6 class. If they brought in both Fegans and Smith and were also able to pull off a flip of four-star athlete Derick Smith, who is currently committed to Alabama but was on campus Saturday, they'd move up to No. 5.

Richard Silva is the Auburn athletics beat writer for the Montgomery Advertiser. He can be reached via email at rsilva@gannett.com or on X, formerly known as Twitter, @rich_silva18.

This article originally appeared on Montgomery Advertiser: Auburn football: Unpacking what Tigers did at Big Cat Weekend