Ohio State football fans have been frustrated with Larry Johnson's lack of recruiting in recent years. Right now, the Buckeyes have five-star recruit Khary Wilder committed in the 2026 recruiting class. If he does sign, that would be the first five-star defensive lineman they have landed since 2021.
A lot of the complaints from Buckeye fans have been about the fact that Johnson can't seem to relate to recruits anymore and that he's gotten lazy on the recruiting trail. Landing Wilder would help dispel some of that notion, but it's hard to fully get rid of that narrative.
Shemar Stewart was first first-round pick in the 2025 NFL Draft after being a five-star recruit in the 2022 recruiting class. He wanted to pick Ohio State, even calling them a "dream school". He recently detailed how Johnson ended up screwing up his recruitment to the Ohio State Buckeyes.
Shemar Stewart details how the Ohio State football team screwed up his recruitment
While talking in an interview with Malik Wright of Wrightway Sports Network, he talked about how Larry Johnson fumbled the bag.
"Ohio State was my dream school. It was Ohio State and LSU, both my dream schools. So I was like, "Man, if I ever get one of those, I'm going". So one of my visits to LSU, horrible visit. So back to the drawing board. I'm like, "Okay, Ohio State". Went to my visit, everything was cool. The D-line coach said like "Hey, I'm coming to one of your games, just wait for me."
This is where things went wrong for the Buckeyes, because it seems that Johnson lied to Stewart and went to someone else's game instead.
"Play the game, look at the sideline, I don't see him. After the game, I check my phone. On a little sports outlet, and mine was like "Coach so and so is at Chaminade Madonna looking at this player". You just told me you were gonna come to my game, you went to somebody else's game. So I took that as like, disrespect. Threw him away. Forgot about him."
It's hard to fault Stewart for feeling this way. If Johnson did do this, that's inexcusable. That's part of the reason why the Buckeyes have been negatively recruited against for so long, with Johnson still as part of the staff. Straight-up lying to a recruit is a bad look.
Buckeye fans certainly won't be happy about hearing this.