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Tight end dominoes
OK, so we finally have some clarity at tight end. I felt we would after Thursday's camp but even that timeline got delayed another 24 hours with Cincinnati Elder standout Joe Royer landing his offer on Friday evening.
So now the dominoes are going to start to fall. Here is how I have it right now....
First and foremost, I'm pretty confident that Royer is going to take this Ohio State offer and probably soon. Notre Dame is not a factor here given the current landscape. The Fighting Irish have taken two tight ends already in the 2020 class. LSU was an interesting offer for Royer, but it came just a couple of weeks ago and neither the player or his family really know anything about the program. Don't see that happening.
Penn State and Arizona State are two programs that Royer likes quite a bit, but I think with Ohio State being right up the road, having a teammate in Jakob James already in the class and just the general outlook of the depth chart are all things that are going to play pretty heavily in Ohio State's favor here.
I think if Ohio State was going to offer Lachey, it probably would have done so on Thursday or Friday. I think the Buckeye staff made its choice here. I think Lachey is likely going to end up at Michigan State and like Royer, I think it gets done pretty soon.
Ohio State made better progress for four-star Texas standout Jalin Conyers than anyone thought possible. I don't even think the OSU coaches would have envisioned making his top three before the recent visit. But Conyers is very likely not coming to Ohio State. Would be a pretty huge upset if it's not Oklahoma. Pretty sure distance from home is going to win here.
Which leaves us with Cam Large. The Massachusetts star will be part of the big June 21st official visit weekend. Large is a top priority for the Buckeyes at this point and they would certainly love to land his commitment on or shortly after the visit and wrap things up at tight end for the 2020 class.
Since our last update on Cam, he has narrowed his list to four programs; Alabama, Georgia, Ohio State, and Wisconsin. Ohio State is probably as good of a guess as anyone at this point. They have a real chance here and Large's relationship with Ryan Day has really been gaining steam since his March unofficial visit. Again, they are both New England guys so there has been a natural connection there.
Large should be deciding sooner rather than later, so Ohio State will either have all of its answers at tight end by the end of the summer, or they'll at least have one in the fold and then have the entirety of the season to reshuffle the deck and find one more guy to add to the mix. But the dominoes are certainly about to start falling, all of these guys are likely going to be off the board fairly soon.
Evans starting to put visit schedule together
We've been waiting for Rivals100 defensive end Desmond Evans to start piecing together his summer visit schedule and there has been progress made on that front over the past few days. Unfortunately it's not great news for Ohio State at this point.
Evans will make visits to North Carolina on June 15th and South Carolina on June 22nd. He's also planning to visit Virginia Tech on July 27th. All of these are unofficial visits. These are all schools within about a three-hour driving radius of Sanford (NC) so this continues to reinforce the narrative that it could be very difficult to pull Desmond out of the state of North Carolina, but even more difficult to pull him out of his region.
No Ohio State, yet, though I'm told that won't be the total extent of his summer visit schedule. That being said, I don't know that Ohio State is super optimistic at this point about getting Desmond on campus this summer as an unofficial visitor, though they are certainly still trying to make that happen.
All isn't totally lost, however. Have also been hearing that Evans plans to make an official visit to Ohio State in the fall and is eyeing the weekend of the Michigan State game right now, which would be October 5th.
Getting Evans based on just that fall official visit would be a very tall task and I think OSU realizes that. This certainly looks like a recruitment that could go the entire distance, and if that's the case that's probably a positive for schools like Ohio State and Alabama who are both trying to pull Evans 7+ hours away from his home. But ultimately the success rate goes way down with prospects (way, way down) when you don't get that unofficial visit first.
We'll see if Ohio State is among the visits that Evans adds here this summer, but right now it's looking like no unofficial this summer and an official in the fall. I think the former will need to change to really give Ohio State a reasonable chance. Right now you definitely have to like where North Carolina and North Carolina State sit, especially if Desmond stays local this summer with his unofficial visits.
A couple more OSU picks
Two new OSU picks during the week, one for Clark Phillips and one for Cameron Martinez.
I've had OSU in the driver's seat since Phillips made his spring unofficial visit to Columbus. He'll be back on campus on June 21st for his official visit. Notre Dame has been a school to keep an eye on for Phillips for a long time as well and confidence on that end seems to have really dwindled the past couple of weeks.
I have kind of been waiting to see what Phillips does in terms of setting up an official visit to South Bend, but that still hasn't happened. Cal might actually be the biggest threat for Phillips at this stage. This is one that Jeff Hafley has made a priority and it has just been trending this way for a while. With confidence slipping on Notre Dame's end and the lack of an official visit in the plans at this point, it was just time to make the pick. Things can always change with this stuff, but kind of like with Kourt Williams, I just like where Ohio State was standing coming out of the first visit and in the weeks afterwards there hasn't seemed to be any waning on those those feelings from these guys and now the Buckeyes get the official visits.
Martinez is another one that I've been contemplating for a while. Ohio State, from everything that I've been told, is definitely sold on the kid. He's a guy who can do a lot of different things on the football field, he's kind of a smaller version of Brendon White, to me. I think you always want a Cam Martinez or two in your class and I believe the Buckeyes are prepared to take him if he wants in.
There has been a lot of talk around Michigan with Martinez but I actually think Northwestern might be the competition at this point. The bigger question will be, if Martinez ends up at Ohio State, what does that mean for the wide receiver position. Does Martinez count toward the wide receiver number, the DB's/Bullet number, or does he just sort of fall into the athlete/best available category that is usually reserved for the late deciders.
I personally like Martinez as a bullet candidate, but Martinez likes to have the ball in his hands and he has certainly showed enough skills this spring to be a legitimate H guy in Columbus. If Martinez does count with the receivers, that would not shut the door on guys like Mookie Cooper or Marcus Rosemy. There is the potential for the staff to go five receivers here in 2020 if they want. As I've said before, I believe they'll need to take nine wide receivers combined between the 2020 and 2021 classes and that's just with a snap shot look at today's landscape. Further attrition could even push that number higher, though I think, attrition or not, this number can't go *too* much higher as you start to have guys bunched too closely together.
So while Martinez would make for some interesting discussions regarding the make-up of this recruiting class, I don't think it would really shut the door on anybody.
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