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Thoughts from the Road
I spent my weekend in the DMV, watching five-star defensive lineman Bryan Bresee on Friday night and then making my way to the St. John's vs. Marietta (Ga.) game on Saturday afternoon. A lot of takeaways from the trip as I got to watch and evaluate several Ohio State targets, and one commit in Jake Wray, and also got to talk to several people who are on the ground and around these guys on a regular basis.
Will start with Bresee since he was the first guy I watched. First off, I don't think Bryan's body is going to allow him stay at defensive end in a permanent role unless he chooses a place like Alabama which runs a three-man defensive front. He is more Rashan Gary in body type and style of play than he is a Bosa brother or Chase Young.
That said, he's a phenomenal talent and I think can play up and down the defensive line situationally. He's already at least 280-pounds and looks like one of those guys that is going to play in the 300-310 pound range and still be freakishly athletic. Those guys are few and far between, but Bryan is one of them. He has an amazing get off for a kid that big.
But I was just as impressed with some of the intangibles. He's a leader on his team, you can tell by watching him in pre-game, watching him on the sidelines and watching him inbetween plays. He's a vocal guy who plays with a lot of energy. I had my camera ISO'd on him on every defensive snap he took on Friday and he does not cheat the game, he didn't take a single play off. When you put that type of energy and motor into a kid that physically talented, you have something special.
I think he's a Rashan Gary/Christian Wilkins type of interior pass rusher who can slide outside if need be, but is probably best suited as a three-technique. But he'll be a three-technique potentially in a one-tech body, that's a big frame. Just so impressed with how quick he was at that size.
Saturday was quite a match-up between St. John's and Marietta. For Marietta, Arik Gilbert is an absolute freak. I'm picky about making a tight end a five-star (and Arik could be a DE too, he's more of a jumbo athlete than anything) but Gilbert is a guy I think you make an exception for. With Mekhail Sherman out with an injury, Gilbert was the biggest freak on that field. Think he's SEC bound, but as long as Jake Wray is his teammate and you're going to be recruiting that school, it doesn't hurt to try.
Jake Wray is kind of an interesting offensive lineman to evaluate. Most high school linemen are pretty proficient run blockers but either need work on their pass sets or in some cases with guys like Josh Myers, need to completely learn how to pass protect because they don't do it in high school. Wray is kind of the opposite of that right now. Marietta rarely, and I mean rarely, runs the football, it's an air raid type of attack. So Jake is getting a ton of experience in pass protection.
I thought he held up very well against a very talented St. John's defensive front on Saturday afternoon. He got beat a couple of times, but was mostly very strong in giving Harrison Bailey time to find open receivers. They don't really line up and run at people very often and that certainly is not how Ohio State does things with its power spread, so getting stronger and showing the physicality are two things I'd want to see moving forward, but I thought he played a good game and even gutted it out at the end when he got dinged in the fourth quarter.
As I alluded to above, five-star DE/LB Mekhail Sherman did not play due to injury. Not at liberty to go into detail about it, but I suspect this won't be the last game he misses. So while I had plenty of prospects to watch on Saturday, I unfortunately didn't get an evaluation on a guy who is probably my favorite class of 2020 prospect on tape. That said, in talking to him after the game, he's as big as Joshua Perry. Not 16-17 year old Joshua Perry, but the Joshua Perry who suited up for the Chargers last season. Unbelievably impressive kid.
You can read my update with Sherman on the front page. Ohio State is still in his top two, I continue to have it on pretty good authority that the other mystery team in his top two is Alabama. But there are others involved as well, really every school in the country is recruiting this kid.
But I am awfully close to making an Ohio State call on this one. If it wasn't Alabama as the top competition and if it wasn't so early with so many national powers drooling over him, I'd probably have already done it. But I really, really like where Ohio State stands with Mekhail right now. It won't be easy to hold off the wolves here but each time I talk to Mekhail I get more and more of an Ohio State vibe from him.
My first priority after this is posted is to get my update on Rakim Jarrett in the can for tomorrow. The class of 2020 Rivals100 wide receiver had a tremendous game on Saturday, scoring a pair of touchdowns and then icing the game at the end with a nice catch on third down to move the chains and allow St. John's to run the clock out.
He's got some Johnnie Dixon in him. He's not a huge physically imposing kid, but he can really run and he is just very natural in his movement, route running and catching everything with his hands. He's also a big-time competitor.
Ohio State is going to have some tough decisions at wide receiver in 2020. Definitely first world problems, but Jarrett is certainly good enough in my mind to play at a place like Ohio State.
That brings us to 2020 defensive tackle Tre Williams, who really likes Larry Johnson and the Buckeyes early on. Given Marietta's air raid offense, this was not the best game to showcase Tre, who would be a one-tech at Ohio State in my opinion. He's not one of those monster interior pass rushers that we've seen a lot of recently, he's more of a throwback. That said, he moved the line of scrimmage pretty consistently, but when 90% of all plays are pass plays and most are designed to get the ball out quickly, he wasn't able to really fill up the box score.
Will have an update on Tre as soon as possible as well.
Visitor notes
Will have individual updates on many of the visitors from Saturday in the coming days but have a few quick hitters that I wanted to get posted here tonight before that happens.
Four-star Parkersburg (WV) tight end Brenton Strange popping up on campus was certainly further evidence that Ohio State is at least contemplating taking two tight ends in this recruiting class. In a year where I think Ohio State, and many other top flight programs for that matter, are struggling to find guys they really, really like, the Buckeyes seem to be pretty high on Brenton's abilities. He turned in a great camp performance over the summer, which earned him the offer, and despite taking Cormontae Hamilton, Kevin Wilson and Urban Meyer have not stopped recruiting Strange.
Ultimately I think that if Strange wanted in, the Buckeyes would be inclined to take him as a second tight end and perhaps more so as a "best available" type of target. If Strange elects to go elsewhere, Notre Dame is probably the biggest competition right now, I don't think you'll see a huge push for a second tight end in the class unless they are able to find another one that they really like via senior film or a decommitment somewhere else.
This weekend's trip was an unofficial visit, so look for Strange to return later this fall for an official.
Another interesting visitor from the weekend was 2021 defensive end Jack Sawyer. Yes, Pickerington North High School isn't very far away, but Sawyer has really made it a point to get over to campus whenever he can and Urban Meyer and Larry Johnson have certainly made it a point to let him know they want him there at every opportunity.
There really aren't many (any? Jayden Ballard perhaps) other guys in 2021 that we can really say are huge priorities right now, but Sawyer absolutely is one. He was impressed with the atmosphere around campus in Meyer's return.
"It was fantastic," Sawyer told me this weekend. "The environment was rocking."
The better news for Ohio State? All is well with Sawyer, Meyer, and the Buckeyes after a couple of chaotic months.
"I talked to (Meyer) multiple times on Saturday," Sawyer explained. "It was good. We have a really good relationship. (The events of the past two months) haven't affected me at all."
Still think Jack wants to continue to enjoy the process a little bit more with two and a half more years to go until he has to sign somewhere, but I continue to like Ohio State's chances of ultimately landing him.
Also of interest this weekend was the West Bloomfield (Mich.) duo of 2020 four-star safety Makari Paige and 2021 RB/ATH Donovan Edwards who made the trip down from enemy territory. I profiled Paige not too long ago on here as a guy who was sort of flying under the radar in terms of the fanfare. Ohio State has been very active in Michigan in 2020 and guys like Justin Rogers, Rashawn Williams, and Devell Washington have received a lot of the attention, but Paige is a guy the Buckeyes are recruiting pretty damn hard right now.
Paige enjoyed his time in Columbus and I'll have a full update on him tomorrow. But he, like many other visitors, pointed toward the atmosphere and the energy around campus with Meyer's return as a highlight of the visit.
Edwards was offered on Saturday by the Buckeyes and I'll have a full update on him tomorrow as well. That said, Edwards seems to really like Ohio State early on. This could be a classic Big Ten East battle with Michigan, Michigan State, and Penn State.
"It was an amazing experience," Edwards told me this weekend.
Again, more on him tomorrow, but this is a guy that is getting a lot of hype in the 2021 class and I know he was brought up by one of our posters here this past week as someone to watch, so he is apparently impressing everyone who gets a chance to see him play.
Haven't caught up with Bryan Bresee post-visit, but spoke to a couple of recruits who spent time with him on Saturday and the general thought was that he was meshing well with the other guys that were visiting, including a couple of the commits. I don't think we're going to see anything earth-shattering coming out of the trip. Ohio State is a legitimate contender here but I think this one is going to stretch well into 2019 before it reaches a conclusion.
Bresee told me on Friday he's going to try and get things down to a working number of five, probably around the end of the season. I think the "safe" schools right now are Penn State, Ohio State, and Georgia. I think those three would certainly make a cut to seven (which is an alternative number if he can't get to five) and are near certainties at a cut to five as well. From there I think it's anyone's guess. Alabama and Clemson can never be discounted, especially with defensive linemen. I don't think he'll end up at Maryland, but he seems to have some in-state loyalty there to the program and could potentially keep them on the list. There is also Michigan who is still plugging away and then there are possible upcoming visits to Auburn and Oklahoma which could influence things, but again, I'm looking at PSU, OSU, and UGA as schools with a lot of staying power.
