It is starting to leak out so I might as well tell what I know. There is good news and there is bad news with Mike Adams. The bad news first. He will be suspended for the first two games of the year. I will not comment on why. There is much speculation. I cannot confirm it so I will not go into it. The good news is this shows he was not pushed down the depth chart because of performance. I heard about Andy Miller all summer. I was not very impressed with how he looked in the spring game. I like the move of Shugarts over to LT. He was only

I was looking back at this senior class, the class of 2005. Talk about a study in contrasts. This class has been feast or famine.

You look at players like James Laurinaitis, who came out of nowhere. He was committed to Minnesota, his home state school. That was his best offer. He gets an offer to Ohio State, changes his committment and makes himself a first round draft pick. Brian Robiskie was a kid I was very high on but the Buckeyes did not seem to take a liking to him until late. He had an offer from Miami on the table. That was a school that at the time was still basking in its fading glory. Robiskie accepted the offer relatively quickly and went on to becoming a 2nd round pick. Malcolm Jenkins was another kid that was a kid that did not get alot of attention. He had the better offer list of the three but still was not a kid who made anyones top 10 nationally as a cornerback. Donald Washington was considered a late throw-in player and a reach. He is an NFL player.

1 - Seantrell Henderson

For the longest time there has been this chatter about Ohio State, Notre Dame and  USC.   Now he has set dates for those three. Oklahoma and Florida have not been set to my knowledge. I think there is just as much to be read into the fact that he set visits to those three as there is the fact that in all three visits he sees USC. Look at the Buckeye and Fightin' Irish schedules. We are away to Michigan and Penn State. There is no other at home that comes close to the USC game. Notre Dame is not any better. Distance matters. I think USC is the team to beat but I think we have a shot.


2 - Corey Brown

There is so little coming out about this kid. What has come out is good for the Buckeyes.One report has us leading. Considering what we are doing with Jordan Hall, he has to see that he would fit here.

3 - LaMarcus Joyner
I want to believe, especially after the private reports I received about how he looked at Friday Night Lights, but we can't seem to distance ourselves from Florida State. You have to be better than an instate school. I believe that the longer he waits the better for us. I think Bowden may hang on for too long. Florida State is no longer a top 10 program. I think we could see more evidence of that. Joyner is such a competitive kid. You can see it in the way he plays the game. Playing for a team that is a contender every year could be appealing. I don't know if we can distance ourselves from Florida
State but I think they could fall away from us.

As I look over the current Buckeye target list I see a strategy of big fish hunting. No sailfish on good ship class of 2010. We are hunting marlin. The downside is everyone else is tageting these players. Think about this ten:

1 - Seantrell Henderson

2 - Corey Brown

3 - LaMarcus Joyner

4 - Joshua Shaw

5 - Fre'Shad Hunter

6 - Matt James

7 - Chaz Green

8 - Matt Elam

9 - Dietrich Riley

10 - Brandon Linder

If we get two off this list we are going to be happy Buckeye fans. That means we could have some holes. I started this post with the idea of coming up with a list of fall back players for you. We have a problem.

We have been talking about the subject of scholarship numbers available in this class over the last few months. It pops up in any number of threads. I just don't see where the numbers are going to come from to add to this class. What got me thinking about this is the number of players who are going to be here for USC plus the fact that it seems we have players committed to the remaining slots we know to be available. We have the ten verbals plus the four players we know are looking good for four of the remaining six that we know about for sure. Maybe they are not so for sure about those slots but it makes more sense that the staff feels like there will be more available. The question I keep asking myself is, where?

Injuries happen. I can't believe the staff is planning on that. The same with academics. No way can they project that. Early entries are another route. Maybe they know something but someone is really going to have to come out of nowhere as there is no current draft eligible players who are obvious early entry players. So much of the depth chart is filled with seniors and true sophmores. The other way

I think we have to look at the offensive line situation with a wait and see. Again, I am not worried about Mike Adams. If he doesn't contribute this year much it is still not an alarming thing. Next year I think we need to see him step up. Right now he is a kid with not enough experience. He is as talented an offensive line prospect as has ever come through the program.One advatange of Shugarts being in there is having another kid that likes to play football on the offensive line. He is a kid of the same mindset as Brewster and Boren. Hit it hard and keep hitting it hard until they force you to stop hitting it hard, then savor the moment. I don't know if we were ever going to get that temperment out of Adams. I love the big uglies who like to play football. The best I have seen have a big dose of nasty but the nice guys have more than a few icons to point to like Anthony Munoz and another sure Hall of Famer in a guy you might remember named Orlando Pace.

I am very bothered about this thing with USC players and all the injuries. If we win, Mark May will say USC was beat up. If we don't win Mark May will say the USC B team beat us.

Navy is the worst possible warm-up for USC. It would have been nice to see a team come in here with a balanced attack. We could have gotten better prep for a team like USC. Playing against an option team is different. They rushed for 3800 yards last year and passed for 792.

I was shocked to hear a friend tell me that he heard on NFL Network that the Bengals were excited about their offensive line, even without Andre Smith. I watched the Patriots game last night. The Bengal offensive line got dominated. I don't know if that tells us that New England is that good or the Bengals are that bad. It is likely a good dose of both.

Michael Vick should not be welcome in the NFL. His so called "contrite" apology means nothing. This is not a crime you can apologize for. He did not realize that dog fighting is an evil and cruel thing before he got involved? Then how about after the first time you attended a dog fight, Mike? Once you saw dogs mauling each other to death, you still didn't realize this is something that needs to be punished to the fullest extent of the law? Personally, I would like to see Mike in a box. It can be cardboard out in some alley or a wooden one. No sympathy and no compassion for you, or anybody that commits this heinous crime.

written by Bukirob, August 20, 2009
I am not liking what I read coming out of camp. Adams must be completely lost. Shugarts to LT and Miller to LG in place of Boren. Adams and Miller both arent that good of options. Why? Well, if they were they would have slid Cordle back to his guard spot and put Adams or Miller a RT which is a less demanding spot than LT.

This is NOT good at all. With the piss poor recruiting job this staff does with OL you simply can not afford to have a miss. Adams is starting to look a lot like Conner Smith, a stud rep coming out of HS and a complete and total bust in college. Moving Shugarts to LT IMO probably isn't a temporary move either. That tells me that the staff has no confidence in either guy (Miller and Adams) at Tackle.

What this shows to even the most basic of fans is how much danger we are in of a total disaster on the OL. If anyone goes down now, the OL becomes a complete train wreck. With a piss poor effort in OL recruiting this year, I am shocked we let so many kids in Ohio go elsewhere. It makes NO SENSE what so ever

A question from Fifty prompted this blog post:

[quote]written by Fifty, August 19, 2009
Agree that getting them on campus has a lot of upside, but Duane, why do you think they are doing this with this game, but during the first tOSU/texas game they didn’t bring in many recruits and even told Aaron Brown not to come, which he ignored because they wanted to fully concentrate on coaching. Why do you think they are taking a different approach for this game? [/quote]


That is a mystery. I have not looked at the schools that most of these players are coming from. Developing good relationships with schools that put out a lot of talent is something every school in the country goes out of their way to achieve. Maybe they are laying the groundwork for the future with those schools but maybe, just maybe, they are not as locked in on players as it appears. If they can impress one of these elite kids you have to think some of those players are going to find themselves with an open spot on their visit list. We think about Jordan Hicks, Ty Williams, Christian Bryant and I would say Will Hagerup as kids we are holding spots for. I think if one of the superstars coming in for this game say they want to be Buckeyes, that list could be pared to one. I see Hicks as the only untouchable. I love Williams. I think he is much underrated but with his academic concerns it makes holding a spot for him tenuous at best. You are going to say no to Corey Brown or even Kenny Shaw, who I think is a little overrated, to wait on Williams? Another thought is the coaches know we are going to have more scholarships. I have debated with fans about the number 16 for scholarship numbers for this class. That is the number we know. The number you are sure of is the only number you can use to make projections. What number we know for sure and what number the coaches know for sure could be different. The list of candidates for early entry, transfer, medical waiver and academic problems is a short one. Some years you can look at what is going on like last year with Wells, who was always a candidate to leave early, and put that one in the scholarship count, but this year there are no obvious early entry kids. With such a young team it is very difficult to project players that could be moving on. Medical waivers often come out of the blue. Lets assume we do have a couple that we don't know about coming open. How different is this class with lets say just 3 more scholarships? It makes September 12th an even bigger deal, and offers a possible explanation for the lengthy and impressive visit list.

One other thing. I see the tight end scholarship in this class as open now. It looks like the Buckeyes have pushed tight end recruiting to next year with the offer to Ben Koyack for the class of 2011 and the fact that Fragel is still at tight end despite all indications that he is a tackle. I still think he will be but he is a strong candiate to redshirt. Let him stay at tight end for emergency depth for now. He will learn a good deal about blocking working as a tight end.