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What quarterback issues?
Quarterback issues? What are you talking about? Ohio State's biggest cause of angst is on the verge of completely evaporating. As you should know by now, the Buckeyes were able to flip Top 100 quarterback Dwan Mathis on Sunday and away from Big Ten rival Michigan State to boot. That commitment makes arguably the biggest concern of this recruiting class go away as the Buckeyes now have, not only a warm body, but a guy with real talent at the most important position in sports.
And they're not done yet. I suspect we'll hear good news from class of 2020 Rivals100 quarterback Jack Miller in the near future, probably this week. Miller and his family absolutely loved their visit this week and now that the Alabama trip is out of the way, the runway is cleared for landing.
So in just a matter of days (hours?) Ohio State could be turning a position that was in such turmoil and was causing such concern into a position of strength moving forward.
So where does that leave Brian Maurer?
I already dove into this a little bit in the Mathis Impact piece on the front page, but Maurer was apparently very good on Friday night at camp. Certainly I think part of the Saturday morning offer was to put Mathis in a spot where he needed to make a quick decision, but there is genuine interest in Maurer who checked the boxes both on and off the field this weekend with the coaching staff.
But ultimately I would be surprised if Maurer didn't look at the situation with the Mathis commitment and feel he can find something a bit more suitable elsewhere. Having a quarterback already committed has caused some trepidation with Maurer with other schools. We'll know for sure pretty soon as he is supposed to release a top five really at any point and as early as this week.
Progress with Bell
Saturday's visit was a big one for Ohio State and four-star wide receiver David Bell. Ohio State has been pushing harder for Bell in recent weeks after slipping behind schools like Purdue and Iowa who have been more consistent in how hard they have been recruiting David.
My initial reaction after speaking with David is that Ohio State made some steps in the right direction here. In checking with some people on the OSU side of things, there is guarded optimism that this was indeed the case.
One thing that was interesting to me is David talking about a winter decision. I actually think that helps Ohio State. I think a decision in the immediate future would likely not go Ohio State's way. So if he's serious about that timeline and isn't just saying that to keep people guessing, I would actually take that as a bit of a positive.
It is OSU's expectation that Bell will be back later on for an official visit, so that would add more fuel to the later rather than sooner time frame.
Another interesting thing to me is that while David and I have a pretty good relationship just from covering him over the past couple of years, he is not a kid who is particularly eager to do interviews. He seemed much more engaging in this interview than in my recent communications with him, so that was interesting and I think goes along with the idea that he really enjoyed himself on Saturday.
I don't know that a huge leap was made to the point where Ohio State is now the leader or anything like that, but I think this visit went about as well as could be expected because it has certainly seemed recently that he could commit elsewhere at just about any moment.
Again we'll see how serious he is about those comments and how he feels after things are digested for a few days and other schools reach out to him and keep their foot on the gas pedal, but I felt the overall vibe with David and OSU today was pretty good.
2020 hot start?
I think an underrated thing coming out of Friday Night Lights and just the month of June in general, is just how well positioned Ohio State is in the 2020 recruiting class. The Buckeyes are in on a ton of the Top 101 players (sneaking Lejond Cavazos in there at 101) with several of them going on record that the Buckeyes are the early favorite.
St. Thomas Aquinas linebacker Derek Wingo did just that today after a four-day visit to Columbus. Wingo has been fantastic on the camp circuit and I'm told was impressive on Friday night. Now Derek hasn't played a ton of linebacker yet for STA and that could be something that delays a decision here, but Ohio State is absolutely in the driver's seat on that one and if Derek puts together some good early season junior film I think that could come together this fall or winter.
One player who didn't quite go as far to say that Ohio State leads is Jacksonville (Fla.) Trinity Christian defensive back Miles Brooks. But I'll just say it for Miles, Ohio State leads for the Rivals100 product. Brooks is very close with Shaun Wade and Tyreke Johnson and was able to hang out with those guys over the weekend and he was absolutely loving it.
Early leads with Florida kids can be scary, but the Buckeyes are in great shape there early on. Another player that I think Ohio State will have a good shot with is Top 100 St. Louis (Mo.) DeSmet wide receiver Jordan Johnson. Johnson, like the others, had very positive things to say coming out of his visit. Adding to my confidence that Ohio State will be a serious contender for Jordan is that I have been told by a few sources in the past week that the Buckeyes love this kid so he is a guy that I think they'll go hard for right out of the gate here as the 2020 cycle starts to heat up.
When you combine this with the Jack Miller and Lejond Cavazos situations and with Darrion Henry in-state as a big lean, with Jalen Berger and Luke Wypler out of New Jersey as guys who are leaning OSU early, and with many, many other Top 100 guys showing very serious interest, this has a chance to be a monster class.
The timing is perfect too. You want to have great classes every year, of course, but you especially want to have great classes in years that are loaded with talent nationally. 2013 was a class like that. 2020 could be on a similar trajectory.
Latest on the tight end situation
Interesting news out of Friday Night Lights with the offer to Memphis (Tenn.) Whitehaven tight end Cormontae Hamilton. Hamilton, much like Brenton Strange, has been on a roll recently with some big offers including Alabama.
The Buckeyes had been really turning the heat up on Strange, who was back on campus again Saturday, but now another name is in the mix here.
As I've said before, I don't think it's totally impossible that Ohio State takes a pair of tight ends in this class and the two are pretty different. Hamilton is a stocky, physical kid who one OSU source told me is just a 'pure football player' and Strange is more of your athletic, basketball build, flex tight end. Maybe they try to make it work with both.
But it definitely adds another wrinkle to the equation as I think if one commits, the other does have at least some risk of being left out. I certainly don't think it's a slam dunk they'd take both so this could be similar to the quarterback situation where the pressure is now turned up on guys to make a decision.
Strange told me his Saturday visit to Ohio State was another good one, but there is no decision yet on that front. He had previously mentioned to me the possibility of taking official visits and I think he is weighing all of that right now.
On the official visitors
A lot of the weekend official visits did not get started until Friday evening, or in Zach Harrison's case until Saturday. Because of that, there are a lot of guys traveling this evening. Expect more updates on the official visitors, and perhaps another Skull Session, on Monday as kids are either traveling late tonight and/or want to digest things before doing interviews.
Still feeling good about Marcus Washington and Jordan Battle specifically from everything I have heard so far. Washington has the tentative August 7th announcement date set, so that has always been a wild card as far as him holding to that date or coming to a decision sooner, but I like where Ohio State is at there.
