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Mr.
Bucknuts' Recruiting Report Card This report is Mr. Bucknuts' unique attempt to coordinate and grade the recruiting process on a dynamic basis between now and the end of recruiting season for the Class of 2004. As players commit - or emerge on the scene - the report will change to reflect that. Your comments are welcome! The report is the opinion of Mr. Bucknuts and not OSU. Send all broadsides to MrBucknuts@yahoo.com For
more info on these players, check
out theInsiders.com recruiting database JULY RECRUITING UPDATE Since we last spoke, many words have been spoken amongst coaches and recruits. Plus, the vaunted Buckeye “senior advanced camp” has come and gone. And, as we expected, there has been a flurry of recruiting activity. One kid who was offered (and verbaled) that was within the realm of our expectations was Steve Rehring, a genial giant whose life-long ambition was to become a Buckeye. And he joins the 2004 class on the offensive line. Two other new recruits were far less expected, although neither was an “unknown’. The first in this category was Erik Haw, who went to the OSU camp and blazed a name for himself by running a 4.21 forty time as a 209 pound back/athlete. We always thought a lot of Erik, but we thought that a Delbert Ferguson or a Gary Russell or a Ray Williams would have been offered first. We were wrong. The second addition to the category was Jon Skinner, a kid from Pennsylvania who had an injury-marred junior season but who is highly regarded in recruiting circles. Jon is an offensive lineman and he breaks the 0-for-Pennsylvania streak that the Buckeyes were suffering. Hopefully, we will get a Kyle Mitchum or a Dan Connor or another of the top- drawer PA kids down the road… The oddest addition in the past 30 days is Frank Morton, a potential defensive line super-stud from Decatur, GA. We consider him an “odd addition” only because he insists that he was offered and that he committed. Some others are insisting otherwise. Holy Kenyon Buford, Batman! We list him as “committed” but kept his color blue just to provide us the necessary weasel room to wiggle out of this possible predicament, if necessary. Hey – you’ve heard me say before that all we can do is confirm with the kid, his parents and coach, so… Then, last week, another surprise came in the athletic form of Joe Bauserman. It wasn’t surprising that he committed (we did report that he had an offer, after all…). But it was surprising that he is both “gray shirting” and non-committal about playing professional baseball or college football. How’s that for a commitment? So here’s how old Mr. Bucknuts re-assesses the chart now that we are in mid-year form and now that we have nearly 40% of this class filled (!): Tailbacks We’ve got two Ohio burners in Antonio Pittman and Erik Haw, and two super kids, as well. But I keep my grade as a “B” only because no one sees this pair (yet…) in the Maurice Clarett class (and no jokes will be made here about the term “class”…). I think there is a good chance of another offer with Haw assuming the consideration of an “athlete”. I would still like to see Delbert Ferguson in this class but I wouldn’t be upset with an Andrew Johnson or another out-of-state superstar. Fullbacks No one has really emerged yet either on the offer list or the recruiting scene. But we do have both Ryan Franzinger and Cedric Scott waiting in the wings and one (or both) could end up with schollies. Thus, you might see this position used to buttress another position (the offensive line taking six, as an example). Quarterbacks Todd Boeckman is locked in as a gray shirt for this class but we all seem convinced that there will be one more. Brian Hoyer? Could be…Anthony Morelli? Probably going to Pitt. Xavier Lee or Robert Reid? Those would be exciting names to ponder. Anthony Turner? Probably not…And since Tressel seems to delight in plucking kids out of thin recruiting air, other names might surface before this adventure is over. Of course, there is the 2005 discussion with Joe Bauserman (see above). Just like Boeckman, a baseball star who might want to be our quarterback, Tight Ends We’ve got Hoobler. And we’ve got a whole bunch of talent at this position already on the team. I don’t see another recruit coming in but the buzz says that they wouldn’t turn down Rory Nichol if he wanted to come, which (the buzz says…) is unlikely. Wide Receivers We’ve got a real good one in the understated Miles Williams. I’ve gone on record as saying Fred Davis will be here, too. And he’s a great one. After that, it would have to be an out-of-state knockout (like Brandon Barrett) to justify using another scholarship at this position. This could be an “A” grade with Fred plus one… Offensive Line We have the best in the state (Ben Person) and the biggest in the state (Steve Rehring) and one from out-of-state (Jon Skinner). But we really want the next-best in Ohio in Brandon Braxton. And we want the next best in the nation (Jacky Claude? Kyle Mitchum? Jeff Byers? Brett Gallimore?). If two of that group says “yes”, ya gotta take them both. If none do, look for very capable “back ups” out of the group that includes Ohioans Chase Clowser, Gerald Cadogan and Chauncey Incarnato. With a couple of the right names, this could be one of our best OL groups in a long time. Defensive Line This has been a quiet position with most of the noise yet to come. Other than the aforementioned Frank Morton, we have few D-Linemen showing us a lot of love. The two best from Ohio might be Mike Massey and NiAdjei Oninku. NiAdjei declined coming to the camp, which might be the death knell for his recruiting, and the jury is out on the recruitment of Massey. It was supposed to be a Buckeye-Wolverine fight but someone forgot to tell Lloyd Carr, as he has yet to offer. I expect at least three in this group before it’s all over. And that might – or might not –include Frank Morton. Linebackers Don’t forget that John Kerr is coming in August but can’t play until the Class of 2004 gets there. He presents the best of all options: he could be a great one but he can’t accept a scholarship! I will be surprised if we don’t end up with Marcus Freeman and I hope we land a big out-of-state name but it’s not a huge priority until next year. Defensive Backs We have the two early surprises in Sir Welch and Shaun Lane. And I would be very surprised if we don’t get Ohio’s #1 recruit in Ted Ginn, Jr. If a Randy Estes or a Devon Lyons wants to “come on down”, there will be a welcoming committee awaiting. The most interesting character in this group right now is Brandon Underwood. Will he join brother EJ as a Buckeye? And do the coaches think we need another cornerback with EJ, Donte, Ashton, and Ted Ginn all waiting in the wings? Kickers By all accounts, Jason Gianini disappointed everyone at the camp, including himself. But he was dinged up…So, the coaches have to decide if Brian Pierce is their place-kicker of the future and – hey – we still don’t have a punter yet! As to offers, I took a little different tack this time and tried to organize all the offers that we’ve heard from, as long as they came from credible sources. As you know, we have no one on the OSU staff to confirm or deny that these offers have been made! If kids we offered have committed already (to Ohio State or elsewhere…), I removed them from the offer list. As to the master chart, any one with an offer is “blue” and there are a few “greenies” that don’t have offers but are potentials to get one. The numbers are jumping around a bit as Tressel and Staff continue to confound, compound and compile. But that’s the stuff of a different column…
LATEST RECRUITING REPORT CARD
* Joe Bauserman is a gray shirt candidate for 2005 and won’t count against this class any more than Jamario O’Neal will. LEGEND Red Player: He has already committedGray Player: Gray shirt that will be part of the 2004 classBlue Player: I absolutely want this kid!Green Player: Great potential; I might want himBlack player: Good potential |
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TWENTY-FOUR FOR 2004
Y’all have busted me up pretty good in the past for my projections as to how many players we will take in a given year. So this year, I am going to do a more thorough “available scholarship” analysis by position – which should change dramatically, of course, by the end of next season.
Which walk-ons will end up getting schollies next year? Dunno. Who’s gonna transfer? No idea. Academic and felonious fallout? Not a clue.
But I do know who will be seniors (even there, we have to assume Ivan Douglas graduates as a fifth year senior and not as a sixth…). And I am excluding Richard McNutt and Jesse Kline (again). I’m putting back in Kyle Andrews as a scholarship player and I’m not falling for the Bryce Bishop rumors. That leaves 22 seniors and one short-of-the-full-85 for this season, or 23 spots. I will go way out on a limb and say we will get at least one more opening somewhere, leaving me projecting 24 scholarships for the 2004 class.
For those of you already firing up your keyboards to flyspeck this analysis, let me give you my version of the 22 graduating seniors (listed alphabetically for your convenience…):
Will Allen
Tim Anderson
Bryce Bishop
Jason Bond
Bobby Britton
Drew Carter
Adrien Clarke
Ivan Douglas
Ben Hartsock
Michael Jenkins
Craig Krenzel
Maurice Lee
Scott McMullen
Shane Olivea
Pat O’Neill
Fred Pagac
Robert Reynolds
BJ Sander
Darrion Scott
Will Smith
Nate Stead
Alex Stepanovich
Oh, and no one’s going pro early either. Because my model doesn’t allow for that variable.
In
my continuing endeavor to be cutting
edge
or perhaps fearless
forecaster,
it is time to look at the recruiting needs and predictions for the Class of
2004. Note the clever defensive stance here. Most of you will make fun of me at
some point during the next 11 months of recruiting (see message boards for
specifics...). So I am already making fun of myself to take the sting out
of your collective wit. Hah!
We thrive at Bucknuts to be "frequently
wrong but seldom in doubt". That rubs a bunch of you the wrong way, as you
would prefer that we change our motto to "Always perfect all of the
time". Now, where's the fun in that? So we will burnish our
tradition of making bold and broad statements and see how close we get to
reality in the end. Remember, sports fans, perception is not reality.
People who believe that live on the border of madness. Only reality is
reality and that is only revealed over time.
As I tell my children, you can't explain the
meaning of life. It can only be revealed.
With that metaphysical disclaimer behind me,
I plan to talk about the needs of this class - by position - and how many kids
we will take to fill those needs. Tomorrow, in my recruiting column, I will
explain why we will have 24 openings in the Class of 2004 and I will
begin the ponderous listings of the players on the recruiting chart.
I don't plan to update this stuff every week
in the off-season. That is really hubris (chutzpah?). But I will
do a monthly update until the summertime, and then we will go back to the
schedule. Dr. Recruitnik is in his perverse hibernation pattern and will
re-emerge in November to tackle the positions, as we know them at the time.
Until then, enjoy. Discuss amongst
yourselves. And think of me, perhaps as the first of the worst.
OFFENSIVE NEEDS BY POSITION
Running Backs
Unless we lose RB's to injury or transfer, we
have three terrific tailbacks with two years of expected utility ahead of them.
Maurice
Clarett leads the charge but I am
only counting on him through his junior year and
Maurice
Hall/Lydell Ross will finish their
eligibility at the same time. There are a few crossover possibilities (like
Ira
Guilford) but suddenly, OSU is in a
position of questionable depth at this important position. The old saw about
tailbacks is "a pair and a spare" and we are at the minimum. Expect
the Bucks to take two tailbacks in this next recruiting class.
Fullbacks
It's hard to project what the coaches want
from the fullback position because I infer that the coaches have never had their
prototype player for that position.
Branden
Joe and
Brandon
Schnittker are close, but the former
is a built-up tailback and the latter hasn't seen enough game action to help us
form a conclusion. We lost valuable (and versatile) depth in
Jesse
Kline's premature retirement and we
lost whatever upside
Nate
Stead held so far due to academics.
You've got to love the 300+ pound Andre Tyree experiment (Sian Cotton also
played here in high school!). And we've already got a commitment from
Cedric
Scott for this class. Plus,
Stan
White might still end up on this side
of the ball. Regardless of the Scott and White conclusion, we will take one more
fullback in the next class.
Quarterbacks
Like the "passing" of
Joe
Germaine, we don't realize how much
we'll miss Krenzel until he is gone. Gone with him is back-up
Scott
McMullen. On the horizon loom
Justin
Zwick (a Krenzel type...) and
Troy
Smith (a Mike Vick type...). But we
need two more. One will be
Todd
Boeckman, who graciously gray
shirted, giving him some logistical distance from Smith/Zwick. The other one?
Well, we would like it to be
Brian
Brohm from
Kentucky but that's unlikely. In
Ohio, we are blessed with three (or more) great candidates:
Anthony
Turner (a Troy Smith type),
Brian
Hoyer (a Justin Zwick type) and
Darryl
Clark (a Youngstown Ursuline type).
Plus, there's a transfer coming in to Harding from
Texas (
Alex
Engram) and there's five Young Guns
still left in Texas and...well, you get the point. Take two, they're not
small...
Tight Ends
I might be the only analyst alive who still
says that
Marcel
Frost will be a tight end - and that
includes Coach Tressel and Marcel Frost, himself! He's got the speed, power and
hips and he's a tough kid who can block. Meanwhile, we have the sensational
Louis
Irizarry as our TE/WR threat. On
either side of that high/low pair, we have the graduating
Ben
Hartsock - a possession receiver and
a third offensive tackle. We have a better receiver and good blocker in
sophomore
Ryan
Hamby and a very interesting
experiment in big athlete
Redgie
Arden.
Jason
Caldwell seems to have gotten lost in
the numbers shuffle and RJ Coleman is moving over a couple of feet to tackle.
Stan White? Hey - if the coaches don't know where he's going to play, what am I
supposed to tell you? Although I do predict he will not end up here...normally,
then, we would be well stocked at TE, but in a class of 24, we will take the
best one we can find, anyway.
Wide Receivers
Speaking of passing, we passed on the most
talented wide-out in Ohio last year due to his fragile academics -
Ernie
Wheelwright. And we only pursued the
best talents in America. That means the coaches felt good about the current and
future pipeline. We did land
Devin
Jordan, who will be a good possession
receiver. But with Vance gone and
Drew
Carter and
Michael
Jenkins leaving (and Gamble's return
being a ...well, gamble), who will step up? Bam Childress? Maybe. But I
don't see him getting any taller.
Angelo
Chattams? Huh uh. My choice is hard
worker
John
Hollins. And behind him, we have two
potential superstars in
Roy
Hall (think David Boston-type) and
Santonio
Holmes (think
Chris
Gamble-type). Plus - and it's a big
plus -
Dareus
Hiley and Tony Gonzalez could be
sensational receivers. All that said, we will "take two more for 2004"
including phenom
Fred
Davis from
Toledo Rogers. No one will weep for us at wide receiver...
Offensive Linemen
Critics have pummeled both me and Coach
Tressel (not necessarily in that order...) for his perceived (and my reported)
O-line development strategies. We have five good junior starters who will be
better as seniors but they won't make anyone forget
Orlando
Pace and Korey Stringer. We have two
great sophomores (Mangold and Sims) plus a soph in
Adam
Olds who is the kind of kid you want.
And the best of the bunch, possibly, is the heralded but forgotten freshman Doug
Datish. For depth, we have TJ Downing,
Ryan
Cook, newly schollied
Kyle
Andrews, incoming
Kirk
Barton, and re-positioned RJ Coleman.
That's 14 this year and
Ivan
Douglas might get a shot at a sixth
season next year. Plus, there will be more re-positioning from the defensive
line. Candidates include
Tim
Schafer,
Joel
Penton,
Brandon
Maupin and
Sian
Cotton. They might resist at first
but the playing field looks a whole lot better when you have a chance to be on
it. What does that leave, strategically? I say "four more for 2004",
because next year's class might be even better than the 2002 vintage that got us
Mangold, Sims, Datish, Downing and a kid named Morris, who went south on us.
Remember these names: Person, Braxton, Armstrong, Clowser, Rehring, and Stanchek
We will probably take three from that group and the best out-of-state kid we can
find. And critics will talk about other depth problems for a few years.
Offensive Summary
Without any place kickers, that should add up to 13 offensive recruits. As you can see elsewhere from my econometric modeling system and rigorous derivative analysis, I project 24 open positions, leaving 11 for the defense and for a punter.
DEFENSIVE NEEDS BY POSITION
Defensive ends
With the best pair of defensive ends in the
country (either Smith/Scott or Smith/Fraser - pick a pair...) and the pair of
Kudla/Richardson coming on, we are not in dire need here. Add to that analysis
that the strategy is far from determined where Marcel Frost or
David
Patterson or Brandon Maupin or even
Sian Cotton might play and you've got the means and the ends. There's a
chance Redgie Arden ends up here. And some guys say that D'Andrea's natural
position could be as a rush end. We had our heads in the clouds when we thought
we might get both
Turk
McBride and
Stanley
McClover. We got neither. But the
fact that the coaches wanted both signifies that we want two defensive
ends in this next class.
Defensive Tackles
With Anderson and Scott rotating through this
position, we are covered in 2003, but we say good-bye to both those seniors next
year. I think that the up-and-coming rotation will be either Pitcock/Patterson
or Pitcock/Penton, one of the groups of Killer P's. Brandon Maupin will likely
be in this mix in two years and
Marcus
Green will be in it this year. And if
Sian Cotton doesn't end up on the offensive line (my continuing guess...) or as
a defensive end, well...there's certainly a lot to say for flexibility, eh? We
didn't go after that many "pure" inside guys last year. We will go
after two this year to keep the pipeline flowing.
Linebackers
Is this a fun group, or what? Many pundits
(including Spielman and Rudzinski) think that some combination of Hawk/D'Andrea/Carpenter/White
might become the best group of linebackers ever at OSU. And they are all
entering just their second year as Buckeyes. As depth behind them (and here's
where the fun begins!), we have
Reggie
Smith, walk-on
Cliff
Reynolds, transfer Anthony Schlegel
(not eligible until 2004) and gray shirt Cedric Scott (not eligible until 2004).
You've got talent and you've got spacing. But you've also got to take the best
two linebackers you can land in a class of this size. Plus, these guys tend to
play elsewhere (i.e. Arden, Kudla, etc.) as well as perform on special teams.
Safeties
I like our safeties this year. A lot.
Honestly, Fox (my assumption...) and Allen could be better than the super
safeties Nickey and Doss. But Allen leaves this year and Fox the next. Behind
them, you have huge potential in
Nate
Salley and Ira Guilford. You also
have a young
Tyler
Everett and
Curt
Lukens (although he could move
"down" to LB...). Also in the potential mix as Young Guns are Leandre
Boone and
Brandon
Mitchell (both still looking to get
on the field), and
Thomas
Matthews (who might get on as an OLB).
Since safeties are great special teams guys, and are needed in that necessary
evil of nickel and dime situations, we will take two more safeties this year.
But we can afford to be very picky.
Cornerbacks
Just like the linebacking coup of last year,
I think we got the best class of CB's in the nation this year. Whitner is going
to be very special (Clarett already describes him as "freakish") while
Youboty and Gonzalez have terrific athletic skills and unusual speed. Hiley is
so athletic that he will probably end up as a wide receiver. The best CB recruit
we got last year was Chris Gamble and, hopefully, he will play there two more
seasons. EJ Underwood is a good one and he'll be around three more seasons. Once
you get by the logjam of upper-classmen who will serve as depth (now, that
sounds strange...), you've still got the promising Canadian speedster
Mike
Roberts. So whom do you take for
2004? Yes, you take two. Why? Because you can...
Punter
Whew. This position has been cussed and
discussed. Will BJ learn to kick straighter and faster? Doesn't matter - he'll
only be here one more year. Will Huston get a sixth year? He still isn't the
punter of the future. With all the shenanigans at the end of the recruiting
year, I was disappointed that we didn't land Super Leg,
Adam
Graessle. The coaching staff
obviously didn't feel as strongly as me (go figure...) so they must have a plan.
I assume that includes find a scholarship kicker next year!
Defensive summary
So that's two each at every position plus one punter. That's still only 11 players and most of those are merely needed as depth on the defense. That gives us some idea just how strong and deep we already are on this side of the ball.
OVERALL SUMMARY
That's 13 on offense and 11 on defense for 24
overall. Check my recruiting column tomorrow for the definitive analysis of why
we will have 24 scholarship openings in 2004. And that's where the
second-guessing can begin. But anything worth doing is worth over-doing, so now
it's over-do you...
Looking forward to your e-mails!
E-mail Mr. Bucknuts at mrbucknuts@yahoo.com
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