Ohio State football: Wide receiver room has first competition casualty

The Ohio State football program saw its first casualty because of high competition coming in. The wide receiver room lost a former four-star recruit to the transfer portal.

The Ohio State football team has done an elite job recruiting all positions in the last few years. No position has more high-profile recruits than the wide receiver room. Brian Hartline has done an excellent job bringing in some really great players. Having so many great players fosters competition.

Ohio State’s wide receiver room got even better after the 2021 early signing period. They added stud players such as Marvin Harrison Jr., Emeka Egbuka, and Jayden Ballard. Apparently, that was too much competition for former four-star recruit Mookie Cooper.

Cooper has apparently entered his name into the transfer portal. The freshman receiver hasn’t received any playing time so far this season and wasn’t in line to receive much if any next season either. He would need to show that he deserves it by his time on the practice field.

Clearly, he wasn’t good enough to play ahead of other freshmen this season. Julian Fleming and Jaxon Smith-Njigba have been the freshman to see the most time, although Gee Scott Jr. also saw a little bit of time out there. Cooper was clearly the odd man out.

This isn’t a big loss for the Buckeyes at all. As I laid out before, they have a bunch of other receivers who can play. They have plenty of talent at that position for years to come. Cooper is doing what’s best for him to find playing time elsewhere.

This is something that might happen more frequently with so much talent coming in at that position. I wouldn’t be surprised to see at least one receiver from the 2021 class transfer too at some point.