The Hurry-Up: Christen Miller Gives Ohio State More Time By Pushing Back Commitment Date, Dillon Tatum Leaves Buckeyes Out of Mix

By Zack Carpenter on March 8, 2021 at 6:30 pm
Christen Miller
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The Hurry-Up is your nightly dose of updates from the Ohio State football recruiting trail, keeping tabs on the latest from commits and targets from around the country.

Miller pushes decision date back, gives optimism for Ohio State

Ohio State came in late but strong for one of the state of Georgia’s best prospects and one of the best defensive tackles in America.

The Buckeyes quickly made good moves with Cedar Grove (Georgia) four-star Christen Miller, and he almost instantly changed what was previously a top four and made it a top five with Ohio State in the mix against Georgia, Georgia Tech, Indiana and Florida. He also eventually added USC to that group for a top six.

With an April 4 decision date set, however, it was going to make things more difficult for Ohio State to pull out a recruiting win. Miller (along with teammate and fellow Buckeye target Joshua White) actually visited Columbus back in October for the Buckeyes’ win over Nebraska, but Miller has never been able to meet the coaches in person or get a more all-encompassing visit to the school.

So that made it less likely that the Buckeyes were going to pull Miller out of Georgia or the SEC.

On Monday, though, Miller provided the scarlet and gray with a bit of a breather, as he announced on Twitter that he is no longer going to being making a commitment on April 4.

With that decision now pushed back, it affords Larry Johnson and Co. the opportunity to get Miller on campus when (hopefully) the NCAA decides to end the dead period that is currently in place through May 31.

Miller is a player we know the staff really likes, and he has become on its top targets at one of this cycle’s most important positional needs. If Miller eventually makes a visit, I like him to pick the Buckeyes, but until that happens there’s not as much room for optimism. Right now, there is that optimism after today’s announcement.

Tatum down to four, Buckeyes out of mix

Over the weekend, 2022 athlete Dillon Tatum, who had previously been recruited by Kerry Coombs, Tony Alford and the Buckeyes, provided a recruiting update with a trimmed list. Ohio State, which had softened its recruitment of the four-star West Bloomfield (Michigan) standout in recent months, did not include the scarlet and gray on his list.

Instead, Tatum’s final four features Michigan, Michigan State, Notre Dame and Baylor.

Ranked as the No. 269 overall player, No. 16 athlete and No. 5 player in the state of Michigan, Tatum camped at Ohio’s Elite Underclassmen Camp in July and told Eleven Warriors that it was pretty split on what position certain programs see him playing at the next level.

“With the offers that I have, 50 percent want me as a running back, 25 percent is defensive back, and the other 25 percent is athlete,” Tatum said. “They left that decision up to me on what side of the ball I want to play, but they know I can do good things on either side of the ball.

“Ohio State, they look at me more as a defensive back. When I first got there, they were saying they were recruiting me as an athlete because, ‘I don’t know if I wanna put you at slot or running back.’ It depends on what I wanna do going into the future.”

Tatum was viewed mostly as a slot cornerback by the Buckeyes, but Tatum not being as polished or experienced at nickel cornerback – plus a slew of other targets such as Toriano Pride and Ryan Turner who can each play outside or inside cornerback and are higher up the Buckeyes’ board – probably factored in a bit to Ohio State looking elsewhere.

Adding in the fact that Tatum’s high school head coach, Ron Bellamy, was recently hired by Jim Harbaugh to the Wolverines’ staff, and that gives Michigan about as big of a leg-up as it could get. Tatum and Alford had been speaking previously “every 2-3 weeks” for a little while, but that communication died down considerably and we can effectively remove him from any consideration that may have been there previously.

Tatum told us that he hopes to make a decision during his junior year in the spring or sometime in June or July. Either way, we would be shocked to see this going anywhere but Michigan’s way.

And speaking of cornerback recruits that went Michigan’s way, the Wolverines’ recent five-star commit, Will Johnson, was able to get some lessons in with former Buckeye All-American Jeff Okudah over the weekend.

Johnson told us previously that Coombs had compared him to Okudah and believes Johnson can eventually be a first-round pick like Okudah was by the Detroit Lions. Johnson had been hoping to get the opportunity to link up with Okudah at some point soon to glean some stuff from him, and now he got that chance.

“I was talking (on draft night with Coombs) about how I was hoping Okudah would get drafted by the Lions, and he was saying he thinks I can be him one day. And he thinks I can get drafted just as high as him. That was a little comparison between us,” Johnson said.

Allar picks Nits, Singleton sets official visit to Penn State

David will cover this more in Counter Intel, but Penn State on Monday picked up a commitment from an in-state quarterback who had been blowing up on the recruiting trail recently.

Drew Allar, a four-star quarterback out of Medina (Ohio) High School, committed to the Nittany Lions.

Allar ascended into becoming one of the state’s best prospects, and he is currently sitting at No. 257 overall, No. 10 at pro style quarterback and No. 10 in Ohio. There had been plenty of speculation that the Buckeyes might pursue Allar as their second quarterback in the 2022 class. (Ryan Day, after all, has talked plenty about how he wants four scholarship quarterbacks on the roster, and it’s possible we see one of the Buckeyes’ top three guys competing for the starting job transfer out by the time the 2022 early signing period commences.)

We’ll keep an eye on that moving forward.

And to close things out, while we’re on the subject of Penn State, one of the Buckeyes’ biggest offensive targets in the 2022 class announced that he will be making an official visit to State College in June.

Nicholas Singleton, a four-star running back from Pennsylvania, announced that Penn State will be getting one of his first official visits (and likely his first official visit) once the dead period is lifted.

Singleton took a self-guided visit to Ohio State in the fall and enjoyed his time here, and that’s been shaping up to be an Ohio State-Penn State battle for quite some time with Notre Dame in the mix.

We can only hope that the NCAA finally, mercifully ends the dead period to allow Singleton and all other recruits to take official visits whenever and wherever they please.

Header photo: Christen Miller – Rusty Mansell/247Sports

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