Auburn’s new director of recruiting research and strategy first got his career started as a wide receiver at Boston College where he had over 1,000 receiving yards in three seasons. Then he got back into the game at the high school, where he grew into becoming a key figure in the Atlanta area while starting up the Gwinett Chargers youth football organization that grew up over 500 players by his third year. It was a team filled with professional athletes, including former Auburn standout Owen Pappoe. Watson advanced and became the director of football operations and recruiting at Grayson (Ga.), helping build the high school powerhouse.

Thanks to all of his hard work at the high school level and building up a strong reputation for his relationships throughout the Atlanta area, Watson finally got a chance to get in the college game and worked at Florida State as the director of player relations and then Georgia Tech as the director of scouting before arriving at Auburn.

Now on the Plains, Watson is part of Hugh Freeze‘s rebuild process — a process that he joined midway through after the Tigers already signed a top-10 class in the 2024 cycle. Now that Watson has gotten to work and is helping get recruits on campus and host them during visits, he has a pretty good idea of where Auburn is headed.

“All I’m going to say is this, I’m going to steal Deion Sanders’ quote, ‘We coming. We coming,'” Watson told 247Sports on the UNFILTERED show with Carl Reed and Smoke Dixon on Friday. “I have been around a lot of football, you just know, you can feel it. Carl you’ve been around a lot of football, Smoke you’ve been around a lot of football, you just know, you can feel it. From watching how Coach Freeze has kind of flipped the culture just from being in the staff meetings with the unbelievable people I work with at Auburn. Everybody is rolling in the same direction.”

So far Auburn has landed 11 commitments as part of its 2025 class, ranking No. 10 in the 247Sports team recruiting rankings. The likes of both Top247 cornerback Devin Williams from Buford and Top247 offensive tackle Tavaris Dice from Langston Hughes have both been recruits Watson helped the Tigers’ staff land. He’s also continued to work on his old stomping ground, with 2026 5-star linebacker Tyler Atkinson from Grayson describing the Watson hire as “amazing.”

All of that comes as Auburn looks to snap a streak of three-straight losing seasons and getting the program turned around under Freeze. Something Watson thinks is close.

“It’s scary, it’s like dang, everybody can finish the conversation,” Watson said. “One of the biggest, biggest things I respect about Coach Freeze is he speaks and always talks to us about speaking in truth. Not lying to these kids, not selling them false hope or false dreams. Even when you have the NIL talks coming up making these promises with these kids and stuff. Everything that he talks about is in truth.

“And when you watch the way these kids work and the way you watch the strength and conditioning staff with Coach Dom, he’s amazing. When you watch the recruiting girls, watch the admin, just everybody is rolling in the same direction and that stuff trickles down. You see it with the way the kids are working, man. Those kids are out there working on their own, unsolicited, they’re getting in extra. We were in a discretionary period and I’ve never seen so many kids all working out at the same time. We’re very close. It’s going to be an exciting season.”

You can watch the full exclusive interview with Watson below as he describes his start in college football recruiting, whether or not rankings matter and more: