After Ohio State signed 17 players in the recruiting class of 2022 on Wednesday morning, Ryan Day felt good about what the Buckeyes had accomplished.
“I’m very excited about this class,” Day said Wednesday afternoon. “I think that when you combine first off, the athletic ability and the potential these guys have to be really good football players, that’s one thing. But it’s also the type of people that we have that are coming into this program … these 17 are as quality as you’re gonna get.”
Including Gabe Powers, who isn’t yet among the 17 players who have officially signed with the Buckeyes but is expected to sign with the Buckeyes at a ceremony on Friday, Ohio State currently sits fourth in 247Sports’ team composite rankings for the 2022 class even though it has fewer commits than any of the other top seven schools. The Buckeyes have the third-highest average prospect rating (94.04) behind only Alabama and Texas A&M.
Day has emphasized that Ohio State wants to recruit players who are not only talented on the field but are also people who fit the Buckeyes’ culture and truly want to be at Ohio State, and he believes those are the kind of players they signed on Wednesday. He also believes they filled many of their major needs with a class that includes two five-star defenders (C.J. Hicks and Sonny Styles), a four-star quarterback (Devin Brown) and four four-star wide receivers (Caleb Burton, Kaleb Brown, Kyion Grayes and Kojo Antwi), among others.
“We’re bringing in four guys at wideout because there’s a major need there. And we brought in some different guys across the board, in different areas in the D-line, the offensive line, certainly getting depth at quarterback was critical for us,” Day said. “But yeah, there’s always needs and I think we’ve hit some of these here.”
That said, the Buckeyes aren’t done yet. Day said Ohio State still expects to sign “north of 20” players by the second National Signing Day on Feb. 2. And he knows there are some needs the Buckeyes still have to address, whether that be by adding more players to their high school recruiting class or by bringing in reinforcements through the transfer portal.
“We’ll probably end up signing 20-plus guys here when it’s all said and done and there’s some more that we may get in the boat here in the next couple days,” Day said. “Some other guys that we have communication with that we feel good about going into February. So there’s still a lot to be done here in the next month.”
One need that remains obvious is on the defensive line, where the Buckeyes signed only two players on Wednesday, Caden Curry and Kenyatta Jackson Jr. Day said Ohio State wants to make sure it has at least eight scholarship defensive ends and eight defensive tackles on its roster, which could necessitate adding two or three more defensive linemen this offseason. The Buckeyes appear to be well-positioned to do so, though; they’re viewed as the frontrunner for four-star German defensive tackle Hero Kanu and five-star Texas defensive end Omari Abor, who are both expected to make announcements in January, while they’re also still in the mix for four-star Georgia defensive tackle Christen Miller.
Offensive line is another position where Ohio State likely still wants to add one more after signing just three – Tegra Tshabola, George Fitzpatrick and Avery Henry – on Wednesday. It’s possible the Buckeyes could still add another offensive lineman before the end of the early signing period in four-star Wisconsin interior offensive lineman Carson Hinzman, who’s still deciding between Ohio State and his home-state Badgers, while Ohio State is also a finalist for Miles Frazier, a transfer offensive tackle from Florida International.
Another need emerged in the secondary on Wednesday when four-star cornerback Terrance Brooks made a signing day flip to Texas. Day said it was “very disappointing” that Brooks opted to sign with the Longhorns over the Buckeyes, and he also said Ohio State wants to have eight scholarship cornerbacks on its roster – which it won’t have without Brooks unless Sevyn Banks and Cameron Brown both stay at Ohio State for another season, which would come as a surprise.
“I feel really good about our young corners. I thought we hit a home run last year (when the Buckeyes signed Denzel Burke, Jordan Hancock and Jakailin Johnson),” Day said. “So the room that we have, we’ll kind of find out who’s gonna move on and who’s gonna stay in terms of the NFL here. But the goal is to have eight. So if we need to sign one more here into February, we will. If not, we’ll maybe look in the transfer portal and see. But we have to make sure we have eight in that room.”
Like he previously said earlier this month, Day reiterated on Wednesday that Ohio State would “be deliberate about bringing guys in in the transfer portal,” not wanting to rely heavily on adding transfers and potentially upsetting team chemistry in the process. That said, Day indicated that Ohio State is hoping to add one or two transfers to its roster by January – one of which is presumably Frazier, though Day couldn’t specify names – as part of what he expects to be a class of 12 or 13 midyear enrollees, which would include more than half of the players who signed with the Buckeyes on Wednesday.
Of course, in a world where college football players can transfer once without sitting out a year, the possibility that the Buckeyes could lose more players to the transfer portal and have more needs emerge as a result also remains a possibility. So Day says Ohio State will need to evaluate all options to make sure it has the most complete roster possible for the 2022 season.
“We need eight defensive tackles, we need eight defensive ends, we need eight corners, we’d like to have four quarterbacks,” Day said. “And so at each of those positions, by the time we get to preseason camp, those numbers have to be right. We have to be whole.”
“So what we do is we try to identify who those people are and I think for us here at Ohio State, it’s critically important to know that we’re going to look to bring in guys in high school and develop them at a high level. Show them loyalty when they put work into the program. And then develop them to get on the field. I think it’s dangerous to live in the portal world. I don’t think it’s sustainable for the chemistry and culture of your team to be doing that. So if we do bring in somebody, it has to be the right fit, we have to think it all the way through and it has to be the right fit at the right time.”
