The Hurry-Up: Vic Burley Believes Buckeyes Can “Crush the Soul of an Offense,” Ohio State Offers In-State OL, Top DE Target Sets Visit Date

By Zack Carpenter on March 23, 2021 at 6:30 pm
Vic Burley
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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.

“Crush the soul of an offense”

One of Ohio State’s most recent offers in the 2023 class went out to a player from an area of the country famous for housing a powerhouse baseball team that often makes strong showings at the Little League World Series.

Warner Robins (Georgia) High School is the home of 2023 strongside defensive end Vic Burley, a 6-foot-4, 255-pounder who is ranked No. 33 overall, No. 7 at SDE and No. 3 in Georgia, per 247Sports’ initial top 100 rankings of the cycle.

He already holds offers from the home-state Bulldogs (who are, in our opinion, the early leader in his recruitment), plus Alabama, Florida, Florida State, Notre Dame and South Carolina (with the Gamecocks and Seminoles as two other top programs on his list).

Ohio State has already entered that upper echelon after he was extended an offer by the Buckeyes that last week that had him saying he “was very grateful and happy” to receive at this early stage in his recruitment.

“My thoughts on Coach (Larry) Johnson is that I like how he produced a lot of good and great defensive ends and how he can make players better even after they leave,” Burley told Eleven Warriors. “Ohio State’s defense and especially the defensive ends in recent years have been outstanding and can easily crush the soul of an offense.

“What I bring as a player is that I have good hands, I can get off the ball quick and I can reestablish the line of scrimmage.”

Burley is seen as a defensive end by Johnson and Co., and as this process (and the 2022 process) plays out, a picture of how many defensive ends and defensive linemen, in total, that Ohio State is looking to bring into the 2023 class will come into clearer focus.

What we do know right now is that Burley would be a good fit in this system with the skillset he offers, so he’ll be a key player to monitor as a Georgia vs. Ohio State battle could be brewing very early on here.

Leblanc sets visit date

Burley became one of five strongside defensive ends Ohio State has offered in the 2023 class, and another at that position in the cycle – Derrick Leblanc – has been a major target for the Buckeyes since they offered him on July 29.

Leblanc has offers from nearly 40 programs already, including Alabama, Florida State, Georgia, LSU, Miami, Michigan, Oregon, Penn State, Texas, Texas A&M and USC.

He just recently visited Florida State to watch a Seminoles open scrimmage, but perhaps the visit he’s excited about the most (at least one of them) is getting up to Columbus.

He announced this week on Twitter that he has set up a date to do exactly that, as he is set to make an unofficial visit to Ohio State on the weekend of June 4-6.

Ohio State offers in-state OL

Just two weeks after offering Wayne (Huber Heights) High School offensive tackle Aamil Wagner, the Buckeyes went back to the Ohio program to extend another offensive line offer.

On Monday, Ohio State – led by Kevin Wilson and Greg Studrawa – came calling with an offer to Josh Padilla, a teammate of Wagner’s who lines up opposite of him on Wayne’s offensive line. Wagner is a left tackle, Padilla is a right tackle.

Though Padilla lines up as a tackle, he told us that he’s more likely to either be a center or a guard at the next level.

We will have more on both Padilla and Leblanc this week at Eleven Warriors.

Wagner nets All-American honors

Speaking of Wagner, his stock is on the rise of late, and Wayne High School announced this week that Wagner has been invited to play in a pair of noteworthy all-star games – the MLK Senior Game and the All-American Bowl.

We strongly feel that Wagner is a when not if scenario for the Buckeyes to pull into this class now that they have extended an offer to the nation’s No. 13 offensive tackle. Wagner and Padilla will most likely wind up as Ohio State commits in the 2022 and 2023 cycles, respectively, but they are taking their time to let the process play out and continue to build relationships with coaching staffs from the Buckeyes and other programs to ensure the decision is 100 percent the correct one.

McCullough surgery

Ohio State 2022 athlete commit Dasan McCullough announced on Twitter that he will be taking some time off in order to undergo minor surgery and take time to recover.

The nation’s No. 60 overall player and No. 2 player in Indiana following his most from Olathe, Kansas to Bloomington, McCullough had a minor toe injury that he had to take care of. Nothing to worry about here. We’ll likely see him back on the field sooner than later after taking a precautionary measure.

Singleton backs off OV to Michigan, makes it unofficial

On Monday, we included Nicholas Singleton’s decision to add Michigan to his list of official visits as one of our recruiting items.

Singleton, however, has elected against making that an official visit, instead telling 247Sports’ Brian Dohn that he will now make an unofficial visit to Ann Arbor.

He has also set his five official visits to the ones we talked about yesterday (Wisconsin, Penn State) over the first two weekends in June, and he will take his other three official visits to Northwestern (June 15-17), Notre Dame (June 18-20) and Ohio State (June 25-27). Big news for the Buckeyes to get one of those visits as they continue to make a strong run at the four-star Pennsylvania running back.

Header photo: Vic Burley – Rusty Mansell/247Sports

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