Buckeyes Likely To Keep Eye On Portal In Search Of Defensive Line Help

The Buckeyes have wrapped up their 15 spring practices, which means the process now turns to assessing the roster on hand and what needs to happen moving forward.

Individual meetings with players are next on deck. Honest conversations will take place between player and coach, but also between position coaches and head coach Ryan Day.

The transfer portal opens April 16 for 10 days, which means the Buckeyes — and everybody else — are likely to lose a few players. It also means that this will be Ohio State’s first opportunity this year to really dive into the portal as much as they’d like, considering they were busy with the College Football Playoffs when it opened up after the regular season last year.

The Buckeyes lost five senior defensive linemen from last year’s team, so they lost both talent and experience. They went into the portal in the winter for Idaho State defensive end Logan George, who had a strong spring.

Most everyone is excited about OSU’s starting four up front of defensive ends Kenyatta Jackson and Caden Curry, and defensive tackles Kayden McDonald and Eddrick Houston. The depth behind them is a concern, particularly on the interior.

Which is why the Buckeyes could be headed back to the portal once again for some defensive line help.

“I think we’ve got to take a harder look at it,” Day said after Saturday’s spring game. “I don’t think I have the answer right now. But we’ve got to look at it. It seemed to me like there was just a lot of knockback on the offensive side of the ball there. But, again, I don’t want to make any adjustments until I watch the film.”

Defensive line coach Larry Johnson will compile the data and put all of the grades together, as will every other assistant coach. Day’s staff grades as many things as they can so they can better confirm what they are seeing. This allows them to identify how much of their depth is ready to contribute, or at least trending that way.

And if the numbers don’t look good?

“If there’s a hole there that needs to be filled, then we’ll go ahead and fill it,” Day said.

When it comes to the transfer portal, conversations between Day and his assistants are ongoing. “You talk about your depth a lot,” according to Day. This happens before spring ever begins. Every position has a target number of players that should be in that room. That’s the baseline.

For instance, the Buckeyes are two short on the offensive line. They lost players to the portal in the winter and haven’t been able to address the losses.

The transfer portal window in the spring is often seen as being for the players who have been bypassed on the depth chart, but Ohio State is going to be in the market for players who are capable of playing high-level football. They’re also going to be looking to build up their roster overall.

“If you remember, the portal opened and closed before we were done with the last game,” Day said. “Then it was open for five days after the National Championship game. I know no one feels bad for us, but the whole country got to pick off our players, which they did.

“And so because of that, we weren’t able to replace them. So we need to do some of that anyways in our depth chart, and knowing that it looks like this summer we’re going to have to get to 105, which is a whole other conversation.”

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