What’s up? Happy Sunday to you. Welcome to your daily Buckeye Blitz for January 15, 2023. I’m your host Joe from the Buckeye Cast. First off, I gotta remind you that tonight at 8 P.M Eastern, every Sunday night at 8 P.M YouTube, we’ll be live. Check us out, meet Jeff and Shawn, and we’ll be talking all things Buckeye football, including the latest developments such as Brian Hartline being named offensive coordinator. What does that mean for everybody else? We’ve got a bunch of titles changing on the offense. There’s still no announcement on the defense. I imagine that’s coming next week at some point. So, there could be some moving parts there. We’ll see, especially on the D-line coaching. Possibly, maybe, I don’t know.
Anyways, Sunday night tonight at 8 P.M Eastern, check us out. Today, we’re going to continue our 2023 Ohio State Football Improvement plan. We’ve got a plan at least. Yeah, we had a plan, but it didn’t work out so well. So, let’s talk secondary. Yesterday, we talked about offensive line and how we can build depth, what we need to do there. So, let’s talk secondaries, talk corners and safeties. A big issue here obviously showed up in the last two games of the year against Michigan and Georgia. The big plays of course, obviously, don’t need to dwell on those anymore. They’ve been well discussed. That’s why the Buckeyes attacked the portal at the corner and safety positions.
No corners yet. I’m kind of concerned that that Fentrell Cypress from University of Virginia, the transfer, said that he didn’t really feel wanted by the Ohio State coaches. So, Tim Walton, I don’t know, maybe some recruiting issues there. Anyways, so no no corner, but they did get the safety Ja’had Carter. He comes in with a couple years of eligibility remaining and they used him a lot in the slot, but he can move around. He’s a good size, so it’ll be interesting to see where they pencil him in officially.
So, yeah, just run it through who we have. We’re losing we lost Jantzen Dunn, Ronnie Hickman’s going the NFL, he announced again, JK Johnson, Tanner McAlister, Josh Proctor. So, that’s five guys right there that are out the door. Now you got, uh, Ja’had Carter, Lathan Ransom hasn’t said whether he’s coming back or going, but he only has a few, like four more days to decide. The NFL window, I believe, closes this week. In the portal window two is coming up. Latham Ransom, Cam Martinez, and Kourt Williams.
Those guys all four of those guys came in in the 2020 class. Obviously, Jihad Carter was a transfer, but he was a 2020 recruit. We got no safeties in the 2021 class. Okay, so then we got in the 2022, we got Kye Stokes and Sonny Styles. Okay, we got a five-star and a four-star there. The corner room is really thin. I mean both these rooms are kind of thin. Right there, you just had what, six safeties. You got three more coming in in this 23 class. Jayden Bonsu, Malik Hartford, and Hawkins. Then corners, you got Denzel Burke coming back probably his last year. Jordan Hancock, still waiting for him to really show up. Cam Brown, Turner, then coming in in this 23 class, she got Calvin Simpson-Hunt, and Jermaine Matthews.
Again, that’s six scholarship corners. The recruiting from 2018 through 2020 was straight up trash – guys either transferred out or we didn’t take any at all in 2019. That can’t happen at Ohio State. Let’s talk snap counts real quick for the guys that are returning.
Denzel Burke led the corners with 521 snaps. JK Johnson was up there over 400 on the season but he’s out the door. Cam Brown is gone. Jyaire Brown had 196 snaps. Jordan Hancock, as I mentioned, only 103 snaps. He did not even play until week seven. Then he played a lot, then didn’t play. It was like the injury, the hamstring injury, I know was the issue with him, going all the way back to last fall camp. So we need him healthy. Can we please get Jordan Hancock? See what he has. Ryan Turner only had 20 snaps.
Looking at the safeties, Lathan Ransom had 551 snaps. Proctor, no. Cam Martinez had 168. Kye Stokes had 83, Sonny Styles had 55 and Kourt Williams had 42. Again, Kourt has the shoulder injury. We really don’t know what we can bank on with Kourt Williams at this point. Other than adding depth, he needs to get that shoulder healthy. It looks like a torn labrum issue that he had surgery on and he’s wearing one of those big, huge braces on it. So get healthy, Kourt Williams. I would love to see you healthy and on the field and contributing.
So again, these corners, I really want to touch on them because that’s my main concern. I think we got plenty of safeties, especially since we bring in Ja’had Carter to add some depth. Calvin Simpson-Hunt is a high four-star coming in in this 23 class. I really like him coming out of Texas. He’s six foot 175, perfect size and just gotta coach him up. Coach Walton.
Jermaine Matthews also a stud, high four-star coming out of Cincy, six foot 175. Like virtually a mirror image of Calvin Simpson-Hunt. And in the 22 class, we had Jyaire Brown. He was a high four-star and came out of Westchester. We need to see him continue to grow. He looked good at times but we haven’t seen hardly any of Ryan Turner. Like I mentioned, Jordan Hancock was almost a five-star, he’s a high, high four-star and I was North Gwinnett High School down in Suwanee, Georgia. So six, he’s a little bit taller. He’s got a little bit more length as I like to say at 170 but he’s put on a little bit of weight so I met you, he’s a little bit heavier now and definitely in shape.
Going back to the safeties, my concern is that we don’t have a lot of experience. You know, at least with the corners, Denzel Burke will be a three-year starter by this season and Jordan Hancock’s gotten some good snaps. So I think those have to be your starting corners. Safeties though, this is kind of a toss-up. I was not impressed with Cam Martinez last year at times, especially in that Michigan game. He got roasted. Maybe it was a nice fault, maybe he was supposed to have some safety help over the top. But at the slot, you gotta go man-to-man against receivers. It’s like a slot corner. You know, you’re like a nickel. So obviously, Sonny Styles is going to be in the rotation if not a starter. I think he has to start. The guy has so much ability but I think he’d be at the strong safety, the boundary.
I think he has so much ability, but I think he’d be best suited at strong safety, covering tight ends and bigger guys. He has the athleticism to do anything he wants really. I’m wondering if he’ll slide into a linebacker in 2024 if he continues to put on weight and gets bigger. We can’t bank on Kourt Williams as a starter. I assume Lathan Ransom is going to come back, and I think we should move him to the deep safety, or the “adjuster” as they call it. Kye Stokes probably rotates in there at multiple safety positions. He’s a hitter and I like that he’s physical and has good size and speed, so he can play just about any safety position.
I don’t know if any of the freshman coming in will be ready to play, but maybe we’ll see. We have to address the issue in the secondary, with safeties and corners. We need to get depth, and I would love to see them go back in the portal or continue to target some corners. We need some experience back there, that’s the main issue. I hope you join us tonight at 8pm Eastern on YouTube live. As always, we appreciate you liking and subscribing to the videos and podcasts. So, appreciate you guys and take it easy. Talk to you tomorrow. Go Bucks!