Five-star OL sets commitment date, four-star EDGE puts Ohio State in top schools

The Buckeyes’ season is rapidly approaching, but the recruiting efforts continue on.

We are now only five Saturdays from Ohio State’s season-opening banger against Texas, and the Buckeyes will soon be back on the practice field in preparation. Off the field, Ryan Day and the coaching staff have assembled the nation’s No. 7 recruiting class, but they are hoping to continue to add to it ahead of signing day with still a number of top prospects on the board.

One of those names happens to be one of the very best offensive line recruits in the country in five-star IOL Darius Gray. On Friday, the Richmond, Virginia native announced a commitment date of Aug. 22, where he will choose between a top five schools list containing Clemson, LSU, South Carolina, Tennessee and Ohio State.

Gray comes in as the No. 1 IOL and No. 16 overall prospect in the class per 247Sports’ rankings. The 6-foot-3, 285-pound lineman holds a whopping 45 scholarship offers to his name, and made official visits to all five of his finalists, including a trip to Columbus back on June 10. While there is no clear leader in his recruitment, LSU and South Carolina seem to be atop the list, but a lot can still change in a month’s time.

That said, position coach Tyler Bowen has developed a great relationship with Gray dating back to his time as the offensive coordinator at Virginia Tech. The Buckeyes are also very much still in limbo over their handling of NIL efforts, which will obviously impact how aggressively they are able to pursue the remaining prospects on their board.

All that to say: we’ll have to wait and see. If it’s Ohio State vs. the field in this recruitment, i’d lean towards the field. Bowen has put together a very solid offensive line group in his first offseason at the helm of the position, landing a pair of top-10 national tackles in Sam Greer and Maxwell Riley in addition to three-stars Aaron Thomas and Tucker Smith. Adding Gray would obviously be massive, but it isn’t a make-or-break recruitment for this cycle.

Looking ahead to the 2027 class, Ohio State is already hard at work. Larry Johnson and crew know that the 2026 defensive line haul isn’t nearly good enough, and while there is still time in this current cycle to rectify things, they are getting a head start down the road.

On Friday, the Buckeyes got one step closer with a four-star EDGE as Krew Jones included Ohio State among his top 12 schools. Holding nearly 30 offers, Jones is already moving things along in the process, cutting things down to a dozen with the Buckeyes in the mix alongside Florida State, Oklahoma, Oregon, Texas A&M, Tennessee and others.

Jones currently ranks as the No. 18 EDGE and the No. 138 overall prospect in the 2027 class. He is also the No. 1 player out of his home state, Utah. Ohio State offered Jones not too long ago at the end of April, and clearly made a large enough impression to still make his top schools list. It helped that the offer came from Ryan Day himself during one of the Buckeyes’ recruiting camps.

“It meant a lot, I mean, just showing me that it’s in my right path, I’m on the right track to get what I want to get,” Jones told Eleven Warriors. “I mean, getting offered from a big school like that really shows you that you just keep working and you’ll get what you want.(Coach Day) just told me that he liked my talent, he was watching my film, he saw what I could do, and he just told me to keep working, and he sees me as a great big athlete and a great player for them.”

Jones had nothing but good things to say about the program following his trip to Columbus.

“It was crazy, something different from what I’ve seen in the past at colleges. They definitely have that winning culture, that mindset of developing kids, sending them to the league, as you see with the draft, the amount of edges and the amount of players they sent, so it was awesome,” Jones said.

“I mean, that culture, that trophy room, you walk in there and it’s like, ‘Wow.’ Huge. Their motto is like that fight, that brotherhood, they’re developed here, that’s big with them. That’s something I just haven’t seen in other schools, but yeah, it’s that culture, that winning mentality.”