Your Current Buckeyes

Let’s take a look at the current Buckeye Team as we head into another matchup with Clemson, shall we? Where does Justin Fields rank among Buckeye QB’s? Where do Shaun Wade, Tuf Boreland, Wyatt Davis, and Jonathan Cooper land on the all-time list of Buckeyes? I have no idea. I mean, Tuf’s not even his real first name. But we can go through some dudes and discuss some stats. Does anyone look like they’ll be drafted next year? We’ll go in approximate projected draft order. Kiper and McShay, blessing our Buckeyes from on high. Let’s use this order.

Justin Fields. Quarterback. Will the Jets will take him with the 2nd pick, give him something like $35M dollars, and… give him an offensive line? And a coach who can coach? CBS Sports has him going 10th to the Broncos, which would be amazing. He’d make like $10M less in guaranteed money, but he wouldn’t be getting shit on by Jets fans. si.com has him going to Detroit with the 7th pick. Who knows.

Fields currently has 56 passing TD’s for the Buckeyes, tied with Joe Germaine for 4th all time. He’s 2 TD’s ahead of Dwayne Haskins and Troy Smith, and 4 TD’s ahead of Braxton Miller. But, by throwing 2 TD’s against Clemson, Justin can pass Terrelle Pryor and Bobby Hoying and move into 2nd place all time in Buckeye history. 58 would put him in 2nd. First place is JT Barrett… WITH 104 PASSING TD’S. Have we built any JT Barrett statues yet? Good grief.

Justin is 13th in passing yards in Buckeye history – he can move into 12th place if he throws for 296 yards against Clemson, passing Jim Karsatos. We’ve got a shot to beat ClemClem if he throws for 300 yards and a couple TD’s, right? He’d then need another 200 or so to catch Braxton Miller. Which would probably have to happen in the title game against Notre Dame. He also has 15 career rushing TD’s, good for 8th place among Buckeye QB’s, 2 behind Terrelle Pryor.

If these next 2 games are the last 2 for Justin, we can say he was one of the great Buckeye QB’s even though he played just 1.5 seasons. Impressive!

Shaun Wade. Defensive Back. 1st Team All-American. ESPN’s Todd McShay has Wade going in the middle of the first round. Wade, along with Wyatt Davis, opted out of the season and then opted back in once Justin Fields forced the B1G to get it’s collective shit together and play the season.

Wyatt Davis. Guard. 1st Team All-American. Mock drafts I’m looking at have him going in the middle of round 1 of the draft and are assuming he’ll be a starter pretty quickly. Described in multiple places as a “mauler.” There’s good money in mauling.

Chris Olave. Wide Receiver. Best player in the history of Ohio State Football. Late in Round 1 or maybe Round 2. Seems like an NFL star who will just run awesome routes and make plays, right? Also, from McShay, “In high school, Olave ran a 10.8-second 100-meter dash and posted a 23-foot, 6-inch long jump.” Now we’re talking. In my 3 minutes of trying to find out, I can’t tell if he was also a hurdler, which as we all know is the key to being good at football (this is not full-proof, seeing as I was the single worst player in high school football history, yet pretty good at hurdles).

Chris is currently tied for 6th place in receiving TD’s in Buckeye history with 20 (one ahead of Dane Sanzenbacher, Joey Galloway, and Terry McLaurin), tied with KJ Hill. Hill is the all time leader in receptions with 201 and Olave is 23rd, with 96. All he does is catch touchdowns. Cris Carter 2.0, basically. He’d need 4 more in the playoff this year to tie Brian Robiske.

And, if he and Justin decided to come back next year, he would definitely pass Robiske, Santonio Holmes, and Cris Carter. He could probably catch Devin Smith, with 30. And he’d have an outside shot at the king – David Boston, with 34 receiving TD’s.

Josh Myers. Center. Looks like he’s projecting as a 3rd round pick in next year’s draft. Another guy described as a mauler. I mean, bears maul people, right? Josh spent his childhood getting his ass kicked by his older brothers, which is how people get good at things.

Baron Browning. Linebacker. Also projecting as a 3rd round pick. In 4 years as a Buckeye, Baron has 102 tackles including 17 for loss and 6 sacks. He’s questionable for Friday’s game against Clemson, according to an alert I just saw. Which would be bad. We really need him.

Pete Werner. Linebacker. Projecting as a 4th round pick. Pete is Todd McShay’s favorite prospect who probably will not be picked on Day 1. 168 tackles in his 4 years at OSU, 16 tackles for loss, and 4 sacks. Butkus Award Semifinalist this year.

Master Teague III. Running Back. Teague is a 3rd year Sophomore. I don’t imagine he’s going pro, but he’s listed as a potential 7th Round pick. The Master is 44th in Buckeye rushing history with 1344 yards, ahead of guys like Joe Montgomery, Curtis Samuel, Maurice Clarett, and Troy Smith. If he plays 2 more years and gets ~600 yards a year, he can get into the top 20.

Haskell Garrett. Defensive Tackle. 2nd Team All-American. So, Haskell played great this year, which is great. He’s projecting as a late round draft pick and is considering returning, now that all players are given an extra year of Covid-Eligibility.

But it’s also great that he’s not dead because at the end of August, 2020, he was SHOT IN THE FACE attempting to break up an argument near OSU’s campus. The bullet apparently went through both cheeks and exited cleanly, which I guess is the optimal way to get shot in the face.

And then he went out and had a good year, making plays, etc, including this bonkers pick 6 against Michigan State. Every time he made a play the announcers would kind of carefully say he got shot prior to the season… but, I mean, how was this not an enormous story? I guess because he recovered so quickly. Anyway, Haskell, please go to the NFL and make lots of money and invest it wisely and don’t break up any more fights.

Tuf Boreland. 207 total tackles for the 5th year senior. His first name, according to his Wikipedia page, is Jarred. Which is presumably pronounced like “Jared” and not like “jarred.”

Garrett Wilson. Wide Receiver. Garrett is a true sophomore and had more receiving yards than he did last year – in half the games. 68 receptions, over 1000 yards, and 10 TD’s in 2 seasons. Garrett + Olave are a great WR combo and my prediction is they combine for 13 TD’s against Clemson.

Jeremy Ruckert. Tight End. The junior has 24 catches for 215 yards and 7 TD’s in his 3 Buckeye seasons.

Jaxon Smith-Njigba. Wide Receiver. True freshman! Only 6 catches this year but his one TD catch was amazing.

Trey Sermon. I’ve already written about Trey’s record-setting B1G Championship performance. We’re going to need him to do that a couple more times if we want to win this thing. He’s got to go full Zeke Elliott.

Jonathan Cooper. Sharing a name with the… 8th best coach in OSU football history is fun, right? In no particular order – Urban, Coach Day, Tress, Woody, Earle Bruce, Francis Schmidt, Paul Brown, maybe Carrol Widdoes (the guy who did so well temporarily replacing Paul Brown that when Brown came back FROM THE WAR to get the job he was promised it got all awkward… and so he went to the Cleveland professional football team and they fucking named it after him??). Maybe then Coach Coop?

Anyway, Cooper, the player, is a 5th year senior, and a local kid from Gahanna! We probably can’t call a 6-4, 260lb dude a kid, I guess. He was injured last year and worked his ass off to get ready for the season. And, this season, Coach Day started a new tradition – selecting a player to wear #0 or the “Block 0” in honor of Bill Willis. Willis was a defensive end for the Bucks from 1942-1944, before joining his former coach, Paul Brown, on the Browns, BREAKING THE NFL COLOR BARRIER. One of the all-time great Buckeyes, his number (99) was retired many years after it should have been, because, you know, racism.

From Coach Day, “The Block ‘0’ jersey is given to the player that best exemplifies the toughness, the accountability and the fight that the people of Ohio share and specifically the fight that Bill Willis exemplified during his career,”

OK perfect. Those are some of the Bucks that are gonna send Dabo and his bullshit home. Apologies to Sevyn Banks, Tommy Togiai, Marcus Hooker and the others I didn’t dive into. You guys are awesome as well. Let’s fucking go!!

-Eric