Ryan Day quietly brought in a 5-star target to watch Ohio State destroy Rutgers

The No. 1 team in the country has been flying pretty far under the radar as the final week of the regular season approaches. Ohio State has been quietly buzz sawing through the Big Ten, and heading into Week 14, it is well-positioned to repeat as national champions. With that understated dominance on the field, maybe it shouldn’t be a surprise that Ryan Day quietly brought 2027 five-star David Jacobs to Ohio Stadium on Saturday. 

The 6-foot-5 edge rusher from Roswell, Georgia, is the No. 8 player in the country according to 247Sports Composite and the top edge rusher in the nation. Jacobs has taken plenty of unofficial visits this fall, predominantly favoring the SEC with trips to Athens, College Station, Baton Rouge, and Knoxville.

Jacobs has also ventured a bit farther north, however, with an official visit to Notre Dame in September for the Fighting Irish’s 41-40 loss to Texas A&M in Week 3. Now, Ohio State has entered the mix, and Jacobs would be a massive addition for Day’s Buckeyes. 

5-star edge rusher DJ Jacobs took a gameday visit to Columbus

It’s hard to have any complaints about the 2025 Ohio State defense. It’s the most dominant unit, on either side of the ball, in the entire country, and the biggest reason Ohio State has been the undisputed No. 1 team in the country nearly all season. However, after losing former five-stars Jack Sawyer and J.T. Tuimoloau to the NFL in the offseason, the Buckeyes lost a significant amount of pop off the edge. 

Caden Curry has emerged as a star in his senior season, and Beau Atkinson was a solid, if unremarkable, transfer portal addition from North Carolina. Kenyatta Jackson Jr., who has inside-out versatility, has been disruptive as well, ranking second on the team in QB pressures with 28, eight shy of Curry’s 36. All three are listed as seniors and could be in their final year, though Atkinson and Jackson both have an additional year of eligibility remaining. 

Either way, while Day has recruited the edge position well, bringing in five-star Eddrick Houston in the 2024 class and Zion Grady, a top 100 four-star in 2025, it’s been a few years since the Buckeyes landed the No. 1 edge in the country. The last time was 2021 with Tuimoloau. Jacobs represents that level of game-breaking talent along the defensive line, which will become more important as Ohio State’s veteran secondary begins to age out of the program. 

A huge key to Matt Patricia’s success in his first year leading the Buckeyes, aside from just the overwhelming amount of talent on his defense, is the experience level in the secondary. It allows him to be versatile in his coverages and to use complex, NFL-level disguises and rotations in the second and third levels of the defense that most college quarterbacks have never seen. 

Patricia may be able to coach that year-in and year-out, but more likely, without veteran stars like Caleb Downs and Davison Igbinosun in the secondary, and Sonny Styles at the heart of the defense, that amount of complexity will be difficult to achieve. When that’s the case, it’ll be nice to have a long, bendy, twitched-up edge like Jacobs, who can wreck the game from up front.