Ohio State football: Buckeyes lose another CB to portal, grab a safety

The Ohio State football team keeps losing defensive backs to the transfer portal. J.K. Johnson is the latest to defect.

The Ohio State football team is reaching a critical point in terms of numbers in the secondary. After already losing Jantzen Dunn, Jaylen Johnson, and Lloyd McFarquhar to the transfer portal, second-year cornerback J.K. Johnson has announced his decision to enter as well. This leaves Ohio State with only six scholarship corners for next season with only four of them having any game experience.

This isn’t great news for the Buckeyes as Johnson was expected to compete with Denzel Burke, Jordan Hancock, and Jyaire Brown for playing time next season. Johnson was a highly-touted top 50 national recruit coming out of high school. He also started five games this past season, so some thought he had the experience to make a jump next year.

This leaves cornerback coach Tim Walton in a bit of a pickle depth-wise. It’s been expected that the Buckeyes would explore the transfer portal to add a quality corner, but nothing has come to fruition yet.

Ohio State was expected to be high on Fentrell Cypress, an All-ACC corner from Virginia but he chose to play at Florida State instead. The picking is getting slim for the Buckeyes in the portal, so they better strike soon.

The top corner remaining in the portal is probably former Syracuse player Duce Chestnut who was a three-star recruit in 2021 but started last season for the Orange and played very well. He would be a great addition to the room, especially now that his former teammate, safety Ja’Had Carter just joined the Ohio State football program tonight, as was expected.

Carter has played at Syracuse for three seasons and has five career interceptions. He surely will come right in and compete for a starting role right off the bat for Ohio State.

Hopefully, the Buckeyes can add a corner soon and get the number back up in that room for Tim Walton.