Despite missing out on David Sanders Jr. and several other top offensive line targets in the 2025 recruiting class, Justin Frye isn’t lying down and accepting defeat.
With less than four months to go until signing day, Ohio State has only two offensive linemen in its 2025 class, both in-state prospects: Carter Lowe and Jake Cook. But Ohio State’s offensive line coach says there will be more to come.
“We're not done yet,” Frye said. “I mean, keep your head on a swivel here. December's a long way away. The weekend's coming up soon.”
While NCAA rules prevent Frye from speaking publicly about specific recruits, his comment could foreshadow an impending decision by interior offensive line target Jayvon McFadden. The three-star guard from Maryland announced Thursday that he will make his commitment on Saturday, and Ohio State is believed to be the team to beat in his recruitment.
Where is home ? https://t.co/Ccs0vzoSa0
— jayvonmcfadden (@JayvonMcfadden_) August 22, 2024
Landing McFadden wouldn’t be an insignificant win for Frye, as he has been one of the Buckeyes’ top interior offensive line targets since they offered him last November. The Buckeyes would have taken a commitment from McFadden even if it landed Sanders or Josh Petty, and they are confident in his ability to outperform his recruiting ranking.
That said, a commitment from McFadden won’t change the fact that Frye has yet to land a five-star offensive line prospect in his Ohio State tenure. It will give the Buckeyes an out-of-state offensive lineman in the 2025 class, but it won’t change the fact that Frye has yet to land a top-150 overall prospect from out-of-state since becoming OSU’s offensive line coach in 2022.
Frye doesn’t deny that Ohio State should be able to successfully recruit the best offensive linemen in the country. But he doesn’t think stars and rankings should be seen as the be-all, end-all, pointing to the Ohio State success of 2023 NFL draft picks Luke Wypler, a four-star recruit, and Dawand Jones, a three-star recruit.
“Yeah, stars matter, sure,” Frye said. “My wife can point out, that's a five-star, that's a really good guy, right? But that pool of (five-star) linemen is not as big as some of the others. That doesn’t mean we shouldn't go get them. It doesn't mean we're not working to go get those guys. And like I said, it doesn't mean that we're done, either. It's a long way to December, too.”
One aspect of Frye’s recruiting strategy that has been scrutinized is whether he’s casting a wide enough net in his search for future Ohio State offensive linemen. The Buckeyes have offered 29 offensive linemen in the 2025 class and 15 offensive linemen in the 2026 class. By comparison, Alabama has offered 37 offensive linemen in 2025 and 33 offensive linemen in 2026; Georgia has offered 46 offensive linemen in 2025 and 40 in 2026; Michigan has offered 44 offensive linemen in 2025 and 32 in 2026.
Frye defended his more conservative approach to offering offensive linemen because he believes in the importance of the evaluation process.
“It's still all about, in my mind, the evaluation. You have to be a guy that can come here and grow and perform and play,” Frye said. “If a kid loves ball, wants to be great, wants to get developed, wants to be around and play against (defensive line coach Larry Johnson)'s guys and those guys in practice and we feel like we've evaluated them through camp or through tape and we've offered those guys, then we want to go get those guys. Is that 40? Is that 60? Is that 90? That's off our evaluation of what we have.”
Frye said it is his responsibility to ensure that offensive linemen the Buckeyes are evaluating but haven’t offered yet understand that doesn’t mean Ohio State isn’t interested.
“You get into early junior year, first two or three games, which we're going to do on guys that we felt like were right there and you needed to see, that's when the next wave of offers and recruiting stuff goes into,” Frye said. “If a kid's just looking for a check mark on the internet, yeah, I've probably failed at that my entire career early on until you know that they're a Buckeye.”
Ryan Day didn’t specifically address Frye’s performance as a recruiter during his press conference on Thursday. But he did make it clear that his expectation for Frye’s unit entering the 2024 season is just as high as it is at every other position.
“I think we'll see what we've got this year. But I feel like we've got some really good young players in the system. I think that we should have the best offensive line in the country,” Day said. “That's the standard here. It has been for a long time. And so we'll keep pushing towards that this year. And I think everybody in that room will tell you the same thing.”
