What is up? Welcome into your daily Buckeye Blitz or day, the old Wednesday, January 25th, 2023. I’m your host Joe from the Buckeye cast, bringing it to you. First bit of housekeeping, any of you listening on the podcast who used to listen on Spotify, the Spotify issue has been fixed. I didn’t know so many people were using it, but there was a technical issue on their side. We got it all ironed out. Spotify should be working on all the apps and whatevers, so check it out. Let me know if you’re still having an issue, and I’ll try and dig into that, and we’ll figure out what the problem is. But everything should be working fine. I’ve done a lot of testing myself, so cross your fingers.
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So today, we’re still working on our Buckeye Improvement Plan for the after season, not the off season, after season heading into preseason soon. Oh, by the way, there was an update on the spring schedule yesterday, and spring practice will begin Tuesday, March 7th. Got it. Side note, I’m trying to start a campaign to bring James Laurinaitis back to Ohio State. Anybody that wants to join me, please feel free to make your thoughts known. I think he needs to be a Buckeye. Wisconsin’s going after him, you know. Luke Fickell being tight with James, and Notre Dame is probably going to end up losing him at some point. I’m not sure they can keep him on as a GA forever, but he would be moving over as a GA no matter where he went, most likely. He’s probably not ready to be a position coach yet, at least not at the Power Five level, but I think he could be a GA under Jim Knowles, coach the linebackers and analysts are doing that anyways, you know, they’re coaching on the field. And so I think eventually the NCAA is just going to let everybody coach. They’re going to remove that rule that’s so stupid anyways. It says analysts can’t coach on the field, you know. Everybody’s doing it. Nobody’s tracking it. It’s impossible to report unless you got a videotape of it, you know. But anyways, so join me in bringing James Laurinaitis back home to Columbus.
Anyways, so we’re going to talk the Buckeye Improvement Plan today, defensive ends. We need to build some depth there. Again, this is another one of those positions where we’ve had like a few starters, two starters, and then zero depth behind them. Like you see flashes of a guy, but I want to get into these snap counts, and we’re going to show you who’s leaving. And that’s the concern, is you know, people that are leaving like Zach Harrison. We got to replace all those snaps that he played, you know. And we have nobody that’s really played other than Jack and JT. So let’s talk about it.
All right, first off, let’s talk. Who’s on the roster? Who do we have here? We lost Zach Harrison, Javonte Jean-Baptiste transferred to Notre Dame either Friday. I believe he is out of any kind of eligibility. And we got Mitchell Melton coming back from the leg injury a year ago. It was relatively serious, so not sure you can really bank on him to be in the too deep. He wasn’t a 2020 class, so this will be his fourth year on campus. I hope they got a medical red shirt for him. I assume they did, probably, so he might have two or three extra years coming to him.
But anyways, you got Jack Sawyer and JT came in in the 2021 class. Then, in 2022, you got Jackson, yeah, Jackson, Caden Curry, and Omari Abor.
So Kenyatta Jackson, I always forget his first name for some reason. So those guys came in in the 2022 class. And then just coming in now are Joshua Mickens and Jason Moore.
Now, I don’t think you can plan on a 2023 guy coming in and starting as a freshman. Chase Young didn’t even do that, you know. And then, I don’t think there’s a Chase Young in our last two classes. So that’s what we got. We got two, four, six, seven guys. Yeah, one, two, three, four, eight. One, two, three, four out of six. Yeah, we’ve got eight dudes at the end.
Okay, but let’s look at these snap counts now and really show you where the issues lie. So JT led the team at defensive end, 504 snaps. That’s a lot, and he played 64 against Maryland. That was his high point of the year. That was the second to last game of the regular season. Then, Michigan 54 and Georgia 51. That’s a lot of freaking snaps, man. 50 snaps. Then, you got Jack Sawyer with 330. Now, that’s a lot less than JT, and what kind of blew me away is in the Michigan and Georgia games, he only had 15 and 16 snaps, 15 against Michigan, 16 against Georgia, Jack Sawyer. So, what’s going on there, and its production really fell off.
I have stats right here, so like his in-game production, he had he registered nothing against Michigan, zero stats. He, it’s like did he play? Not really. Only 15 snaps. So, against Maryland, four tackles, a sack, but against all these garbage teams, he didn’t do a lot. He did end up with four and a half sacks on the year, but his tackles were only 24, only 10 solo, one batted down pass. And so, my concern is that he’s being put at this Jack position, and maybe it’s not best for him. Maybe he should be more of a traditional Rush Edge, you know?
So, anyways, we got to replace Zach Harrison’s 485, Javonte John Baptiste 249. And then, our younger guys, Caden Curry had 78, and he played a lot of special teams mostly. He did have some flashes in the Arkansas state game. Kenyatta Jackson 24, Omari Abor 9. So, we need to replace Zach Harrison’s 485 and Javonte Jean-Baptiste 249. So, what is that like 750 snaps? That’s a lot, 740 whatever.
So, where do we turn? Here’s what we got. We got Mitch Melton coming back. He’s six three, two forty-five. Haven’t seen a lot of him, so nothing. I don’t know what you can expect out of him now. Kenyatta Jackson, I like him. He’s a high four-star when he came out in the 22 class from Chaminade, so six five, two thirty-five. These guys haven’t changed their weight much in just one year. The one who has, and I’ll get to him, is Jason Moore. He’s dropped 20 pounds, which is interesting. Then we go to Omari Abor to Duncanville, Texas, six four, two forty, still about the same size. Hopefully, he’s changed his body a little bit in the body by Mick program. He was number 63 nationally in the 22 class, so you got two guys in the top 66 in their class. Kenyatta Jackson was 60. Omari Abor was 63. So, you got two dudes that are top 100, and they’ve been in the program for a full year now.
Then looking at the 23 class, you got Joshua Mickens from Indianapolis, 6-3, 225, maybe a little undersized at 225. Probably gotta put on some weight with him. He was a high four-star ranked 137 nationally in the 23 class, and then Jason Moore. So, he has dropped 20 pounds. I compared his weight. He was at 66 280 coming out of high school. That last, excuse me, last year he’s from the math over in Maryland, but now he’s down to 260. The Ohio State site has him down to 260 pounds. So, probably trimming off some of that baby fat, now putting on some muscle, or at least tightening up, you know. And nationally, he was a 70 78th ranked, you know, a high five-star, four-star, sorry.
These are the dudes we have. We are putting our eggs in their basket. Kenyatta and Omari abort, I think, have to affect that too deep. They gotta be in there at least one of them. And then Joshua Mickens and Jason Moore, I don’t know if you can expect much right now. It, I mean, they’re freshmen, man. It’s impossible. It’s like, you know, O linemen take two years to develop. These guys are D ends. I get that it’s a different position, but I think you still need a solid year to get your body right and get in the program, get adjusted and acclimated to Big Time college football, you know.
So, the wild card, I would say, is Mitchell Mitchell Melton. What does he bring to the table? Is he 100% healthy? Obviously, the experience is there. They probably spent the entire season this past year, 12 months of getting to know the defense and where he fits into it. Is he a Jack? Is he more of a rush Edge? You know, how are they going to use them?
And of course, like I said, with Jack Sawyer, is he going to be a rush Edge and or just float around at that Jack position? I think we need to see more production out of that position, no matter who’s playing it. Like I said, his stats were not great on the year, so, and that Jack position is supposed to be a run stopper. It’s a run Run game Destroyer is why Knowles created that position, but I’m not really seeing an effect, honestly.
So, Jackson, Caden Curry, I think, definitely is in the 2 deep. I think he could be that Jack position, and then maybe push Jack into another role as a D end, or maybe they use less of the Jack position altogether. I don’t know, that’s my thought, but Caden Curry has a hell of a motor and he’s fast twitchy and played a lot last year for a freshman. He played in every game, he led the all freshmen with what do you have 200 200 snaps, I believe, yeah, including special teams. So he had 78 in-game snaps, so still leading leading the way for for all freshmen. So I think either one of Kenyatta or Omari got to be in that too deep and definitely Kaden Curry and where does Mitchell Melton fit into the program?
So, and I have like zero expectations for Mickens and Moore, so that’s what I got for you. Let’s keep improving this team through the after season into the preseason, and keep it locked in here. I appreciate you guys as always and go Bucks!