Auburn Daily

Auburn football makes top six for 2023 recruit DaKaari Nelson

Auburn is in hot pursuit of a 2023 defensive back.

Andrew Stefaniak

Auburn football makes top six for 2023 recruit DaKaari Nelson
Auburn football makes top six for 2023 recruit DaKaari Nelson /
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A big part of recruiting is you want to keep the players from your area within state lines to play their college football. 

The Auburn coaching staff is trying to do just that by keeping 2023 four-star safety DaKaari Nelson in the state of Alabama. 

Nelson is from just down the road in Selma. He stands at 6'3 and weighs 203 pounds. 

He is the 200th best player in the class of 2023, so adding Nelson to the recruiting class would be a tremendous addition. 

He is a very diverse defensive player since he can play safety and defensive back.

Nelson recently put out his top six schools, including Auburn, Kentucky, Oregon, Tennesse, Penn State, and Clemson. 

Here are Sports Illustrated Recruiting Expert John Garcia's thoughts on Nelson.  

He is a really interesting recruit. Nelson is more of a quiet guy. He has not taken a ton of visits. I think he has only been to Auburn once. This is a little more unconventional relative to all the other recruits we have talked about. He has a close friend Jeremiah Wright on the Auburn roster. Selma has not had many high-profile football recruits. The last one that came to mind was Wright. Nelson emerged, kind of like Wright did. Coming out of nowhere, he was an upperclassman when colleges became interested in him. I think Penn State and Kentucky are interesting in this race since he has set a couple of visits to get up to those programs.

If you're Auburn, you need to get him back on campus because it has been kind of hard in his recruitment to get him to take visits. Maybe you get Nelson on campus for an official visit, but you need to get him back on campus and go from there. There is stability in the secondary for the Auburn roster relative to other positions over the last few years. This has to make you feel better about recruiting defensive backs if you're a Tigers fan. Nelson is an in-state guy with connections to Wright, so with all of that going for them, I do think Auburn will stay in the thick of this race.

We don't know a whole lot about Nelson's priorities in this thing. Does he want to travel, or does he want something outside the box. Those things could factor in at the end of the day. From an optical perspective, you have to feel good about Auburn getting an in-state defensive back where it's not a heavy SEC battle. It is more of a regional battle.

You need to win the recruitments that are just a little more favorable relative to the competition. This is not a Jeremiah Cobb or James Smith kind of recruitment. These are the ones that Auburn has won with the Nehemiah Pritchett and Roger McCreary's of the world. Great in-state DB's who have come up as late risers. These recruitments are huge because it is how you build the depth of a roster. The defensive recruits from Alabama are national this cycle, so as many of those battles you can win, the better it will be for Auburn. 

There has yet to be an announcement made for when Nelson will commit, but Bryan Harsin and Zac Etheridge will continue to recruit him hard in the hopes of getting him on the Plains. 

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Andrew Stefaniak
ANDREW STEFANIAK

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