Ohio State Taking Cautious Approach to Transfer Portal

As hundreds of players have entered the transfer portal since college football’s regular season ended less than two weeks ago, Ohio State’s head coach has been taken aback.

“There’s so many guys who are in the portal right now, it’s mind-boggling,” Ryan Day said Sunday. “I think everyone’s just astonished by what’s been going on, and certainly I’m one of them.”

Since Day became Ohio State’s head coach in 2019, the Buckeyes have used the transfer portal to their advantage to add key pieces to their team each year. In his first year as head coach, Ohio State used the portal to land a star quarterback (Justin Fields) and an All-Big Ten offensive lineman (Jonah Jackson). In 2020, the Buckeyes added a transfer running back who would go on to break Ohio State’s single-game rushing record (Trey Sermon). This year, the Buckeyes brought in a graduate transfer kicker who ended up being one of the best kickers in the country (Noah Ruggles).

They’ve been selective, though, about only bringing in transfers at positions of need and only players who they believe will be good fits for the program’s culture. And even now that there are more players entering the portal than ever before, Ohio State plans to stick with that cautious approach.

“You have to take the dynamics of your team into consideration, so we’re doing that, and we’re not just gonna be flippant about those decisions,” Day said. “I think your team and the chemistry of your team is something that we have to really be on top of. Because all it takes is a couple guys and now you can get yourself out of whack. Because when we recruit young men, we bring them in to develop them and we talk to them about what it’s going to be like when they get here and develop them into really good players. And bringing guys in can kind of upset that.”

That might explain why Ohio State decided not to pursue LSU transfer cornerback Eli Ricks, who was expected to visit OSU this weekend before the Buckeyes stopped recruiting him. That said, the Buckeyes are still pursuing multiple transfers. Former Oklahoma tight end Austin Stogner is making an official visit to Ohio State this weekend while Ohio State offensive line coach Greg Studrawa made an in-home visit with former Florida International offensive tackle Miles Frazier on Tuesday.

Great in home visit with @CoachStudOL Thanks for coming to visit me and my family! @OhioStateFB #Buckeyes #Gobucks pic.twitter.com/nAtGw45iO7
— BIG.ZEEK_ (@milesfrazier15) December 8, 2021

Asked specifically on Sunday whether Ohio State would pursue a transfer linebacker, Day indicated that was a possibility the Buckeyes would consider.

“I think we’re looking at all those positions to figure out what would make sense,” Day said. “Is it to add a guy through recruiting and the high school process or is it the portal? And we’ll look at all those positions. We were a little thin at linebacker at times this year, may be a little bit thin moving forward, so we gotta make sure we bolster up that room. That’s the thing at all positions you try to figure out. Do you bring in a young high school guy that you want to develop or do you bring in a portal guy who’s maybe a little bit older? But there’s a lot of things to consider.”

Day told Eleven Warriors in August that having a program players want to be a part of and stay a part of is something he takes “a lot of pride in,” and he believes the key to that is being honest and transparent with players from the time he and his coaching staff begin recruiting them.

Even so, Ohio State has already lost three players to the transfer portal since the end of the regular season – quarterbacks Quinn Ewers and Jack Miller and linebacker/safety Craig Young – while it also lost a pair of linebackers, Dallas Gant and K’Vaughan Pope, in the middle of the season. Those two linebacker exits came after the Buckeyes added former USC linebacker Palaie Gaoteote as an incoming transfer, though it was Cody Simon, Tommy Eichenberg, Steele Chambers and Teradja Mitchell who ended up playing the vast majority of linebacker snaps during the regular season.

Now that players are able to transfer once without sitting out, coupled with more pressure than ever for players to get on the field to increase their value for name, image and likeness benefits, Day recognizes it’s going to be harder than ever to keep players from leaving the program in search of increased playing time. But he says the Buckeyes have to adapt without overreacting.

“I think when you look at the landscape of college football in general over the last year or two years, boy, it’s really changed,” Day said. “And it’s continuing to change. So there’s just a lot of dynamics at play in all of this stuff. Roster management, recruiting, the portal. And that’s, as we move forward, just trying to navigate what that looks like. On a year-in and year-out basis. And when you look at the numbers statistically and the people who are going into the portal and going to other schools, it’s significant, so we have to adapt and keep identifying and evaluating, figure out what’s best for us.

“I think there’s just been so many things that have happened in college football here, and I think we’re still trying to sort through what that all means, and it’s gonna probably be a little while before we sort through it all. We’re gonna see some different things come our way, and we’re gonna have to try to do the best we can to adapt to it. … I think the easy thing to do is to just throw up your hands and say this is crazy. The harder thing to do is just to continue to push forward. And just try to figure out what’s best for Ohio State moving forward.”

Specific to the transfer portal, Day said “that’s not something that we can count on, but it’s something that we’ll use when we need to.”

“I think we’ve been really smart about that,” Day said. “And we’re evaluating all those guys that are in the portal. There’s a lot of them right now. And we’ll just kind of see how things shake out here.”