Is the Ohio State football team closing in on some five-star recruits?

Once the regular season gets underway and you begin to focus on what the current Ohio State football team is doing, while happenings with future Buckeyes tends to get shoved onto the backburner. Now that we have a break in the schedule, it is probably a good time to get caught up on some recruiting news, including a couple of five-star recruits the Buckeyes are pursuing.

The big recruiting news of the day for OSU fans comes in the form of four predictions by the recruiting experts at 247Sports for edge rusher Kenyatta Jackson to commit to the Buckeyes. All are given with a solid confidence rating. The Hollywood, Florida native is the country’s number seven edge rusher.

Ohio State also got a prediction in late September for five-star edge rusher Omari Obor from Duncanville, Texas. He is the number two player at his position and rated as the twelfth-best overall by 247Sports. This appears to be a two-team battle between OSU and Oklahoma. What makes this forecast interesting to me is it came from Oklahoma insider Parker Thune. While he gives it with a medium confidence level, that is far higher than any of the other predictions on Obor to this point.

Longtime Ohio recruiting guru Bill Kurelic of Bucknuts is reporting five-star running back Richard Young is planning on being at the Penn State game on October 30th. Why is this noteworthy? Because this will be his third visit to Ohio State, while he’s visited others just once.

Kurelic also said Young has been talking with TreVeyon Henderson and likes the idea of playing on the same team with the freshman phenom. Young (6’0”, 190) is from Lehigh Acres, FL and is the top running back in the 2023 recruiting class.

A few weeks ago, the top player in Ohio in the 2023 class, Sonny Styles from Pickerington Central, announced his final five of Ohio State, Notre Dame, Mississippi, Florida, and Clemson. Some feel this is now a battle between OSU, ND, and Mississippi, but in looking at recruiting reports, it is really down to just two. This appears to be a fight between the Buckeyes and the Irish.

One Notre Dame insider gave a prediction in June for that school, but this one is a long way from being decided. He’s the number one safety in the country and eighth-ranked player overall, but his size tells me he could be headed for a position change at some point in college. He’s already 6’4”, and 215 pounds. That tells me he is capable of adding a lot more bulk. He is the son of former Ohio State linebacker Lorenzo Styles.

With Quin Ewers officially joining the 2021 class, the Ohio State football team’s 2022 class has slipped to seventh but has the second-highest per-player average. So far, the 2023 class has just one commitment. That’s TE Ty Lockwood from Tennessee. I wouldn’t worry too much. Things will be picking up for that class soon enough.