Listen, I would have loved nothing more than for Tegra Tshabola or Zen Michalski to absolutely dominate spring practice and shut down any and all concerns at the position this upcoming season.
But it hasn’t happened. So it’s time to talk portal options.
From Dan Hope of Eleven Warriors:
While the competition at offensive tackle will continue into preseason camp, Ohio State must determine in short order whether it needs to add talent at the position via the transfer portal. The second transfer window begins this weekend, so the Buckeyes will surely keep an eye on which offensive tackles enter the portal and assess whether any of those tackles would be upgrades over their current players. Day says those determinations will be made in part upon how the tackles perform in Saturday’s spring game.
“I think that’s a conversation to have,” Day said when asked about potentially adding tackle help through the portal. “We got to kind of go through and see how the game plays out, see how that looks on film, take the body of work, and then make some decisions from there. But we’ll kind of have those conversations and see where we’re at.
“It’s a delicate situation, for sure. I think we believe in the guys that we have. Otherwise, we would, we’d say yeah, we got to bring in a guy. I think we believe in the guys, we know that they can do it. We’re looking for more consistency.”
I concede that I am not the one who sees these players every day in practice, but to me, I think the fact that you are even having this conversation at the end of spring practice should tell you that you need to bring in another tackle.
I sincerely understand a scenario where Day and the team might have a plan at tackle that they felt good about at one time and wanted to see through to fruition. But that’s not the case here. Tegra Tshabola was never supposed to be a tackle and Zen Michalski was never supposed to start this early in his career. This is already a backup plan. There’s no reason to stick to it if there’s any indication that it might not work out well.
More than that, they already tried hard to get a transfer offensive tackle last transfer portal cycle and failed. So this isn’t even the backup plan, it’s the third-string plan. Bringing in a transfer tackle would just be going back to the backup plan.
I also sincerely understand why he’s trying to take the “we’ll see what happens” approach, but I think it would greatly benefit pretty much everyone involved if he would just bluntly say that they’re going to take a transfer.
If he goes out and announces “We really want a transfer offensive tackle” in a press conference, that’s like a fucking bat signal to kids across the country who are a simple phone call away from becoming the starting right tackle for a national title contender.
All that to say, if Ohio State ops not to bring in a transfer tackle following spring practice, the offensive line better be a fucking masterpiece next season because I will be absolutely unbearable online otherwise.
- WELL, THAT’LL DO IT
Big congrats to Kyle McCord for winning the starting quarterback job!
A lot of people are making comparisons to the Joe Burrow thumb injury that ultimately cost him the starting job against Dwayne Haskins, but I really think this is a different situation.
I don’t think there’s any real reason for Devin Brown to transfer. He’s way, way younger than Burrow, and I think the odds of him finding a program where he can start right away as a second-year player with no game reps after a few weeks of fall camp are very low.
I also think he’s actually looking at a very good situation even if Kyle McCord is the starter next season. There’s a non-zero chance McCord opts to leave for the draft after just one season if this season goes well. Also, shit happens – he’s an unfortunate injury away from starting.
I do think this injury probably wraps it up for McCord, who was probably the frontrunner anyway, but I don’t think this really means anything for Devin Brown’s Ohio State career.
But I have been wrong before!
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