Skull Session: Importance of Vonn Bell's Recruitment, Jaxon Smith-Njigba Catches Everything, and Justin Fields and C.J. Stroud Meet Chad Johnson

Important news: I will be spending this weekend drinking copious amounts of alcohol in the glorious city of Nashville to celebrate my 28th year of survival on this planet.

Monday's Skull Session will double as a wellness check.

Word of the Day: Inebriate.

“OHIO STATE NEEDS YOU.” Ohio State's landed bigger-name, higher-rated prospects since Vonn Bell, and lord willing they'll do it again many times in the future.

But even nearly 10 years later, you can still look back on Bell's commitment as one of the most important in recent Ohio State history.

Bell’s impact, however, stretches beyond the field. What it meant for Meyer’s program at the time makes it arguably the most significant recruiting win for Ohio State in the last decade. Ten years later, the Buckeyes are still reaping the benefits of a signing that made OSU a viable player for the top talent in a part of the country that had almost exclusively been reserved for SEC programs.

“I just think it opened eyes to a lot of kids in the South that Ohio State was building something special,” Pantoni said. “Obviously Coach Meyer’s name carried a lot of weight down there as well, but when they saw highly recruited kids deciding to come up north, it definitely sparked their interest in at least seeing what Ohio State is about.”

...

“It wasn’t a real long conversation,’” Mariakis recalled, “but I remember the last thing Coach Meyer said to Vonn: ‘Alabama wants you. Ohio State needs you.’ Was that the quote that tipped the scale? I don’t know. But it sure did mean a lot for me to hear that, the difference between wanting and needing.”

...

Inside the Woody Hayes Athletic Center, it felt like a sea change.

“We wanted to make a national splash, and we wanted to make a splash in the areas that had been dominated by the SEC,” Withers said. “To go down into Georgia and Tennessee and get guys like Vonn was really important for us to open that area of the country up for our staff.”

Now, if only they would have played him more as a true freshman...

HE CATCHES EVERYTHING. There are two kinds of good receivers: the kind that cook cornerbacks without the ball leading to easy pitch and catches from the quarterback, and the kind that a quarterback can just throw the ball to in triple coverage and know that he's probably going to come down with it.

Jaxon Smith-Njigba is both.

Dude is obviously damn near unguardable – y'all have seen that in action plenty of times already – but he's also got an absolutely absurd catch rate on contested targets.

Highest rate of contested targets caught in a season since 2017

1 Justin Jefferson (19): 92.3%
2 Jaxon Smith-Njigba (21): 90.0%
3 Laviska Shenault (18): 88.9% pic.twitter.com/0JJO8epVGk
— PFF College (@PFF_College) July 7, 2022

So basically, if you throw 10 balls in his direction into coverage, he's probably going to come down with nine of them.

That's absurd.

OCHOCINCO + QB ONES. Folks, it looks like Justin Fields and and C.J. Stroud got to spend the day with a fan yesterday.

: @justnfields + @CJ7STROUD pic.twitter.com/IIeqCVBrI8
— Chad Johnson (@ochocinco) July 7, 2022

I sincerely wish the Internet would have gifted me with clips of either quarterback tossing to Mr. Ochocinco, but I'll have to settle for what I can get – the photo is glorious enough.

WORLD'S BIGGEST 14-YEAR-OLD. It's not often you see a rising sophomore in high school that looks like he's ready to plug into Ohio State's interior defensive line like, tomorrow. But 14-year-old Tyler Parker fits the bill.

Grinding in Silence Sophomore Campaign On the Way 43 Days out @BCollierPPI @PPIRecruits pic.twitter.com/IKpMhLdUqh
— Tyler Parker (TP) (@iam_tylerparker) July 6, 2022

I saw someone joke that this dude's baby formula must have been protein powder, and I see no other explanation.

SONG OF THE DAY. "Man! I Feel Like A Woman" by Shania Twain.