Ohio State football: Buckeyes underwhelm on signing day
The Ohio State football team finished up early signing day with not a lot of surprises. This class failed to deliver top-end talent.
The Ohio State football team had an uninspiring early national signing day. Ryan Day and defensive line coach Larry Johnson swung and missed on its top two targets in defensive ends Damon Wilson and Matayo Uiagalelei. A major letdown indeed as these two five-star prospects would have added the firepower that the Buckeyes needed to close out the class. Uiagalelei chose Oregon while Wilson picked Georgia.
Aside from the signing of four-star end Joshua Mickens, the Buckeyes did not add anything that wasn’t already expected. In fact, they actually lost a player that was committed to them since the summer in four-star cornerback Kayin Lee who flipped to Auburn. Not great stuff.
Also, the Buckeyes are waiting to see what happens with three-star safety Jayden Bonsu of St. Peters Prep in New Jersey who was expected to sign his NLI but hasn’t thus far. That leaves Ohio State with 19 committed players in the class and an overall class ranking of No. 5 according to 247Sports.
The topic of NIL keeps swirling around this program like a bad dream. It seems that the Buckeyes lost out on a few top recruits who they wanted because the NIL packages didn’t compete with that of other schools. Day had this to say whether or not NIL factored into player’s decisions, via Eleven Warriors:
"“That’s a good question.” Day says the Buckeyes are gonna “keep swinging on this thing.”"
So as the Buckeyes continue to try and navigate this new world of NIL, Ryan Day, Mark Pantoni, and the Ohio State football program will need to play catch up next season as this wasn’t a typical Buckeye recruiting class, no matter what the final rankings say.
Next. Will there be any signing day surprises for OSU?. dark
Ohio State is used to getting multiple five-star talents every class. With only one this season, Ohio State needs to figure out how to keep recruiting top-end players before they see a significant talent dip on the field.