Ohio State Football will learn about depth at one key position soon

The Ohio State football team came into the season with seven different potential linebackers who could see substantial snaps this season. After only four games, the Buckeyes lost Dallas Gant, a senior linebacker, to the transfer portal, and another senior backer K’Vaughan Pope after his sideline outburst.

This has now shortened Ohio State’s linebacker rotation, which is not necessarily bad since select players get more reps and find a rhythm. Cody Simon, Teradja Mitchell, Tommy Eichenberg, Steele Chambers, and Palaie Gaoteote is an ideal linebacker rotation that has shown a lot of improvement since the Akron game.

However, after losing some depth thanks to Gant and Pope’s departure, depth at linebacker is a potential problem that will be present. Ryan Day even acknowledged his potential concern with depth at linebacker,

"“It’s not something where we feel great about. Wish we had more depth there right now.”"

This was seen late in the Rutgers game as two walk-on linebackers, Ryan Batsch and Cade Kacherski, played quite a bit. Even in blowout victories, it is rare to see multiple walk-ons at the same position get substantial playing time at Ohio State.

This is due to young freshmen typically being in waiting, they usually get the late game snaps in blowouts. Reid Carrico is the only true freshman linebacker on the team since OSU did not necessarily need a large linebacker class in the 2021 recruiting class.

Something that is now clearly hurting Ohio State’s depth is the injury of Mitchell Melton, who was having himself a good offseason but unfortunately sustained a season-ending injury. Ohio State is now an injury or two away (hopefully that does not happen) from having a big problem at linebacker.

If someone like Carrico can emerge, that would certainly help potential depth concerns. Also, if a small group of three or four linebackers are playing at a very high level it should be fine. Part of the reason the depth at linebacker looked so slim against Rutgers was due to Gaoteote being out with an injury, but this is exactly the concern if one or two players are out any given game.

Right now, the Ohio State football team is fine at linebacker with the group progressing nicely the last two games. In addition, they have around five solid options at linebacker, giving them room to rotate players. The depth at linebacker is simply a potential cause for concern if a few things go wrong.