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The 3 Biggest Questions Facing Ohio State Football Recruiting · Buckeyes TomOrrow Morning

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  Welcome to Buckeyes tomorrow morning for Friday, April twenty sixth, I'm your host
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  Tom or the Akron game in one hundred and twenty seven days, the game
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  against Michigan in two hundred and eighteen days. Hey, do you remember the
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  backwards episode of Seinfeld They go to India and George doesn't want to take off
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  So the reason we're doing that is because bucke Huddle is holding its spring annual
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  This is the first time we've ever done this, but it's a sale on
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  annual subscriptions. So this is the first time we're doing it. Bringing in
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  Mark Givler of buckey Huddle dot com to talk about it. Mark, I
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  know this is something we have not ever done before, but you know,
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  with the level of interest I think around the program this year, and you
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  know, people are always kind of interested in you know, if they haven't
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  that we post on the premium board for our members. So that kind of
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  kicks off if you go in and get an annual now that kind of kicks
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  off your annual subscription. But then obviously it takes you through June camp,
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  see where Ohio State will have all their June camps, and we'll get some
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  national camps in there in June as well, and then into Big Ten media
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  days and in the fall camp, and then obviously through the season and just
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  from what we've kind of been seeing, this is maybe the most anticipated Ohio
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  State football season and in quite some time. I think the expectations are even
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  higher this year, maybe than ever. And so it gets you all the
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  way through that, and then it gets you all the way because we we
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  waited until after the spring game, it gets you all the way through next
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  year's spring game, so you're you are set through the entirety of next year's
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  spring practice season. So we thought this was a good time to do this.
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  And again we we kind of broadly talk about things here on the on
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  the YouTube channel, on the podcast, but all the all the real in
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  depth stuff takes place on the message board. We've got got recruiting information team
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  inside information, and we've got guys like Ross Fulton, Devin Radcliffe hosting x's
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  and O stuff and breaking down the team and so plus we've got a great
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  community of people. I would say our message board is as drama free as
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  you'll find. We like to keep it that way. It's a very you
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  know, obviously, you know during games and things like that, everyone gets
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  their emotions up, but it's not a constant back and forth of mud slinging
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  like some of these boards get to be. And so it's a good community
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  of people. And so it's I think it's great value. It's almost fifty
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  percent off. So, like I said on Twitter the other day, we're
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  never going to offer a better deal to this, and he mentioned the drama
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  free board. One thing I will also mention the football season is not the
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  vaguely all of that, is a great place to be for all of that
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  as well. And Mark, this is something that current members are able to
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  well great news. You can take advantage of this. This is a
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  very limited time thing. We're only doing this for a very short period,
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  so let people know how they can sign up. Yeah, so if you
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  annual, everyone can have access to the sale, all right, So we're
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  just going to do that once. I know you guys don't want to hear
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  five minutes on this at the beginning of every show, so we're just gonna
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  do that once. I wanted to let you know that was happening because I
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  know we have folks that watch on YouTube or just listen to the podcast,
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  say, this is a great way to support us the work we do.
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  That's all through members, So that's a great way to support us. So
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  presented by Jeff Ruby Steakhouse. That's are insider board. You get access to
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  that and much much more. So there you go, sales pitch over the
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  rest of the show. Beginning Mark, you have you wrote recently about three
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  big storylines for Ohio State recruiting. Right now as we head into what is
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  you know, going to be kind of the high season for recruiting, heading
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  into the June visits and all that kind of stuff, let's start. I
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  mean, game has always won and lost in the trenches, so we're going
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  to spend two thirds of our time today talking about the trenches. Let's talk
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  about the offensive line. Decent start to the Ohio State class. There's a
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  lot of interesting prospects in there in the twenty twenty five class. What does
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  that offensive line class looks like? That feels like that's one of the big
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  lingering questions for this twenty twenty five class. Yeah, they've got a lot
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  of questions to answer on the offensive line in this class, and not all
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  of them aren't necessarily bad, but you know, they've got Carter Low,
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  which is a tremendous tackle prospect. So that's a great start to get Carter
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  in the fold. But there's not a lot of targets out there where you
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  can sit here and say, yeah, they look like they're in great shape.
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  You know, David Sanders the number one player in the country. Yes,
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  the spring visit went well. Do I think Ohio State leads know?
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  Do I think geography is going to be tough to overcome there? Yes,
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  Avery gatch out of Michigan is a Michigan Ohio State battle unless the NCAAA comes
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  in and kind of, you know, shakes things up for Ohio State.
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  I think Michigan's probably the team to beat there with Ohio State running second.
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  And then you have Mica Debo's out of Alabama, who's got some ties to
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  Cleveland and that kind of Cleveland area. But it's a very sec heavy list
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  that he's got right now with Ohio State kind of being an outlier. So
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  you can't count on those three guys at this point. I don't think they
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  lead for any of them. That doesn't mean you give up recruiting them,
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  but you can't count on them, So they've got to find some other targets
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  here the spring, when the coaches are out on the road, able to
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  evaluate, able to watch guys in person, Justin Fry's got to go out
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  there and come up with some more names. Whether those are just in case
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  if they don't get the guys they want, or whether it's a guy that
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  they need to move on immediately. They've got to widen the board a little
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  bit, broad in search a little bit, or they're gonna maybe find themselves
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  in some trouble in the fall if they miss on those three guys and they
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  haven't done their diligence elsewhere. You know, one thing that's going to kind
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  of help them though, Well, really two things. I think. First
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  of all, I think they're gonna go to the transfer portal of this offseason
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  or this next offseason after the twenty twenty four season. They may do so
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  this spring as well, but I think they're gonna go to the transfer portal
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  after this upcoming season to get some immediate help, which may take away a
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  number from the twenty twenty five recruiting class. They may instead of taking let's
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  say, instead of taking four, they take three and then they go transfer
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  portal for their fourth I could see them doing something like that. The other
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  thing is twenty twenty six in Ohio is loaded with offensive linemen. They've got
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  three they've offered already. I think they lead for all three of them.
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  There's a kid in West Virginia right down the road. Duran Parks. I
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  think they're in great shape for dram Parks are certainly the top couple schools there
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  for drawn parks. And then you've got Champ Smith and Florida, who I
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  fully believe they lead for at this point, teammate of TJ. Alford their
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  twenty twenty five commit so they have a great base in twenty twenty six,
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  and they're gonna want to load up in twenty twenty six, so that may
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  impact how many they take in twenty five, all right, And then that's
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  that's one area where they've had solid but not necessarily spectacular classes the last four
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  cycles, last few cycles anyway. Another spot where that's been the case as
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  well has been on the defensive line, where it has just felt like for
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  a couple of years the players they've gotten have been good, solid players,
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  Like we're already seeing it with Edric Houston in the first spring of his career,
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  but it was just not necessarily not nearly as deep a class as we're
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  expecting on the defensive line. And that's a little bit of a concern now
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  moving forward as well, where they've got a couple guys committed, but where
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  is the you know, where is the rest of the defensive line class going
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  to come from? Yeah, and this is a little bit maybe op posit
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  of the O line problem. They've got an abundance of options at defensive end
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  right now. They've got two great ones committed to here in Mathis London,
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  Merrit just elite pass rushers. I expect they're going to get Justin Hill out
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  of Cincinnati went In Woods when he announces in July, and he's kind of
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  a hybrid. They're recruiting him to play the jack position. If we ever
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  see that, I think we finally will here soon. But they finally seem
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  to be loaded up on defensive end. But now they've got all these other
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  defensive ends and so with spots, I don't want to say spots are like
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  evaporating here. There's still some spots left. There's probably there's probably two spots
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  left even if we count Hill. But they're gonna have to kind of figure
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  out the spring, Like, Okay, Larry Johnson's gonna get on the road.
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  He's gonna see all these guys in person. He's gonna watch him work
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  out, He's gonna watch him practice. In some cases, he's gonna watch
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  them take part in some type of spring scrimmage. How are we prioritizing that.
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  I mean, that's gonna be a big thing. You got two kids
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  just in Indiana, Marion Die Damian Shanklin. Do you make room for both
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  as one prioritizer over the other. Got some kids in the South. You've
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  got Isaiah Gibson in the South. USC commit is that he's scheduled official visit
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  for June. Let's find out how serious that is. Is that just a
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  free trip to Ohio State or is this someone they could actually flip, because
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  that'd be a guy who is one of the top guys in the country.
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  So they just got to kind of make sense of their defensive end board here
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  the next six weeks, and then they've got to find some defensive tackles.
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  So the defensive tackle boards kind of strange right now. There's not a lot
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  of guys you can kind of hang your hat on at this point. They
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  don't need a lot. I would say probably two would be their number defensive
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  tackle because they don't need to take three or four. I think they really
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  like what they have on the roster. They've got a lot of young guys,
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  Hero Canoe, Kate McDonald, Jason Moore. I'm sure I'm missing one
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  or two. They've got a lot of defensive tackles in the pipeline who have
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  two, three, four years left of eligibility, So they're not super concern
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  from a numbers perspective on that, but they've got to find two. And
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  right now, there's not a lot of like legit bona fide, Yeah,
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  like this is a great player and we're in his top two or three.
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  It seems like he's a great player, but can we get him or is
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  he good enough? We can get him, but is he good enough?
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  They got to figure that out too, So they got to kind of unearth
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  some defensive tackle targets. And the third spot we're going to talk about today
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  is definitely not one where you typically worry about Ohio State recruiting, but there's
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  some lingering questions now. They're usually finding wide receiver. They're usually find at
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  corner now that Tim Walton is at Ohio State handling things, and they're usually
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  in very good shape at quarterback. And that's a really interesting position because you
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  generally only take one. They've got five on the roster right now. How
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  many will they have on the roster by the time whoever is in the class
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  at twenty twenty five shows up? Well, isn't that an interesting question?
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  And we have no idea whether it's going to be two or four or what.
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  So what are they going to do? You've got your twenty twenty five
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  class, you're twenty twenty five quarterback in tav in Saint Clair. When you're
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  looking out at twenty twenty six, what is that quarterback board looking like right
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  now? Yeah, And that's the question for the spring, and that'll bleed
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  certainly bleed into June when quarterbacks can come up and camp with Chip Kelly and
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  Ryan Day at the Ohio State one day camps. But that's a question I
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  threw out there because they've had so much turnover with their offensive coaching staff,
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  you know, going from Corey Dennis to Bill O'Brien and Chip Kelly, and
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  it just threw things. I will say chaos is too alarmist because we're talking
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  about twenty twenty six and it's the year and a half off. But it
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  threw things. Will use the word uncertainty. It threw things a little bit
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  of uncertainty. When you know Corey Dennis had the guys he had built relationships
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  with, and then Bill O'Brien was going to come in and do kind of
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  what he wanted to do. And now you've got Chip Kelly, who may
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  have a totally different idea than what those two guys had. And we've seen
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  Jared Curtis, the number one quarterback in the country, go off the board
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  of Georgia, so he's kind of out of the mix now. And they've
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  offered a slew of guys. They've offered like five or six guys in the
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  last month, so you've got these new offers, so you're kind of fishing
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  around right now. And so now Chip Kelly can go out and watch guys
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  throw in person here the next six weeks, and then in June, Ryan
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  Day and Chip Kelly will both be able to do that when quarterbacks come to
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  campus. So that's a big thing. The next six weeks is Okay,
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  we've offered seven or eight guys, but like who's our guy? You always
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  see someone kind of emerge, Like last year at this time is when Tavian
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  Saint Clair started to emerge as their as their guy in twenty five. That's
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  going to start to happen here in twenty six, and it's like, who's
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  it going to be? Could it be Will Griffin from Florida who's kind of
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  the one holdover from the Corey Dennis era to now Da Belle out of American
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  Heritage, a program that Ohio Set's very familiar with, got his offer.
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  That's a big offer for him. He's admitted that could he be the guy
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  who kind of emerges. They're already trying to get his teammate Malachai Tone in
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  twenty twenty six as receiver, so that may be a natural fit. So
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  just kind of see what direction this goes. And oh, by the way,
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  to kind of plug our Southern swing coming up, we'll be Will Griffin
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  and Dabell will be on our Southern swing list, so you'll hear from them
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  directly here in the coming weeks, and many other prospects as well, hopefully
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  a couple other quarterback targets as well on our trip. Yeah, they have
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  been talking to Kevin a little bit about that, and it sounds like it
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  could be a quite extensive Southern swing this year. I'm going to spend a
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  lot of time in the car going to see a lot of high school football
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  players. You're gonna get a lot of great content, and you're gonna get
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  it at bucke Huddle dot com. I did the sales pitch off the top.
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  We're going to wrap it up real quickly. I feel like we should
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  say the say the countdown backwards if we're really doing the Seinfeld thing, but
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  we're not going to do that. We're just going to wrap it up.
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  Say that. We hope you see it bucke huddle dot com very soon and
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  also at YouTube dot com slash Buckeye Huddle. That'll do it for today.
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  Thank you guys all for joining us. Have a great day. We'll talk
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  to you tomorrow.