Auburn football: The 5 best three-star recruits of the Gus Malzahn era

Not every player can be a top prospect out of high school. These are the ones who defied the odds.

Recruiting is far from an exact science. I proved that in my article about all of the five-star recruits that Auburn football has ever signed. No matter how good a player is in high school, that does not guarantee them success at the collegiate level.

And while Auburn has been able to sign plenty of top prospects under the leadership of head coach Gus Malzahn, they’ve also gone out and found some diamonds in the rough.

Whether it be due to a lack of size, inferior competition or simply a case of a player not grabbing the attention of many other major programs, Auburn has certainly had its fair share of guys who defy the odds and make an impact on The Plains despite a lackluster recruiting ranking.

Like in my aforementioned article, I will be using 247Sports Composite rankings for this article and will only be picking recruits that were signed with Malzahn as Auburn’s head coach (class of 2013 to now)

I will also be excluding JUCO prospects from this list as junior college recruiting rankings are sort of their own thing. That means that players like Nick Marshall and Cameron Artis-Payne will not be on this list. I also will be excluding kickers like Daniel Carlson as kickers usually have a max rating of three stars on the 247Sports composite.