Auburn football: Tigers pursuing top O-lineman prospect

Auburn is looking to the future with 5-star offensive line prospect TJ Shanahan

There aren’t many other 16-year-olds in the country who stand at 6-foot-5 and 300 pounds and boast offers from 27 Division-I schools. But, that’s a reality for five-star recruit TJ Shanahan.

Despite being an incoming sophomore at Timber Creek high school in Orlando, Florida, Shanahan has already caught the eyes of countless college programs. Already boasting offers from SEC programs such as Florida, UGA, LSU, Mississippi State, Tennessee and South Carolina, Shanahan was able to add Auburn to that ever-growing list on Tuesday.

Shanahan is more than his size too. Incredibly talented for his age, Shanahan is seen as one of the best recruits in the class of 2023 and in collegefootball.org’s rankings of the class, Shanahan comes in at No. 6 overall and the top offensive line prospect in the nation.

Obviously, Shanahan still has three more years of high school and will likely get an offer from pretty much every college in the country before he decides on a school but it’s a positive sign that Auburn is thinking way ahead when it comes to recruiting.

Outside of the SEC, Shanahan is receiving interest from major programs such as Ohio State, Oregon, Florida State, USC and Oklahoma.

Shanahan will be a college freshman in 2024 and it’s pretty much impossible to guess what Auburn’s roster will look like by then but the Tigers did recently hire new O-line coach Jack Bicknell Jr.

Bicknell has 25 years of collegiate coaching experience and seven years as a coach in the NFL. As a program, the Tigers have had seven offensive linemen get drafted since 2011 and had two O-linemen drafted in 2020.

Overall, Auburn has signed two five-star offensive linemen in program history but neither of them ended their careers with the Tigers. Hopefully, Shanahan would break that unfortunate trend if he signed with Auburn.

Along with Shanahan, the Tigers have also extended offers to many other top prospects in the class of 2023.

In January, Auburn was the second team in the country to offer 2023 defensive end Peter Woods who is the top sophomore in the state of Alabama and one of the best prospects in the entire country.

Auburn was also one of the first to offer Florida RB Richard Young who is considered the top RB recruit in his class.