Ohio State Football: The nation's top cornerback has chosen Ohio State

The dust hasn’t even settled on the 2024 recruiting class, which technically can still be added to, and the Ohio State football team has already added a gigantic blue chip to its small but impressive 2025 recruiting class as five-star cornerback Devin Sanchez announced live on NBC during the High School All-American Bowl that he has officially committed to Ohio State.

The 6-foot 2-inch 170-pound defensive back plays for North Shore High School in Houston, Texas, and is ranked as the number one cornerback in the class according to 247Sports. He is a top-ten consensus-ranked recruit and is now the highest-ranked recruit in Ohio State’s 2025 class which also includes top-100 ranked cornerback Blake Woodby.

Tim Walton is starting to build a reputation as one of the nation’s best recruiters. He already had a reputation for being a terrific coach in the NFL. All-Pro Jalen Ramsey, who was coached by Walton while with the Jacksonville Jaguars, told ESPN in an interview after being traded to the Los Angeles Rams, “Coach Walton … he’s probably one of the best DB coaches, if not the best DB coach, I’ve ever had in my life. He was really good. He was not only a good coach … coaches us super hard … and made sure we were on our technique, but he was a good person as well. He cared about us off the field. Cared about battles we may be fighting off the field. He was always there for us. It was important, and it meant a lot that he was always trying to understand. He was really thorough in everything. He made sure he knew us individually as a player and as a person.”

Walton’s emergence as a “Brian Hartline-like” recruiter and developer of talent has Ohio State getting DBU-like vibes from some of the nation’s best recruits, including Sanchez, who told the Columbus Dispatch that, “Coming out of Texas is best for me because I feel like that’s where the best DB’s go. No disrespect to all those Texas schools down there … I mean, I go down and I them all and I have fun with them. But I feel like me and the talent I have, I feel like coming to a school like Ohio State or Alabama, that’s where I’m going to get developed.”

It's clear that even though Sanchez has chosen the Ohio State football program, this commitment does not signal the end of his recruitment. Much like Jeremiah Smith and Eddrick Houston in this cycle, the Sanchez recruiting battle is going to be a yearlong process.

Stay tuned to Scarlet & Game as we continue to follow Ohio State on both the transfer and recruiting trail this winter.