The Ohio State football season is still ongoing as the Buckeyes prepare to take on Oregon in the Rose Bowl on New Year’s Day. However, in today’s 24/7/365 college football landscape, Ryan Day and his staff can’t take a day off from recruiting high school and transfer talent. Last season’s haul was legendary with five of the team’s seven incoming transfers making impacts and racking up honors left and right. The Ohio State transfer portal class will likely look different this year. There aren’t a dozen potential NFL-bound juniors opting to return and there isn’t a Caleb Downs-type of player in the portal (yet).
Despite all of that, the Buckeyes had a busy holiday season and welcomed five transfers to kick off the hectic transfer season.
Ohio State Gets Active in the Transfer Portal
Fortify the Line
The one Ohio State coach behind Day with plenty of angry fans calling for his job is offensive line coach, Justin Frye. Ignoring the fact that his unit was one of the best in football despite having to replace two stars (one won the Rimington Award), just signed the top offensive lineman from Ohio, and will likely have four drafted in the 2025 NFL Draft, fans have become tiresome of Frye. Tongue-in-cheek comment aside, Frye’s offensive line recruiting and performance have not been up to the lofty expectations.
Day said Ohio State was looking to add more bodies to the offensive line room to at the very least bolster depth. This year, the depth was tested and struggled at times before getting it right against a stout Tennessee defensive line. Enter Phillip Daniels and Ethan Onianwa.
Incoming
The first Ohio State transfer portal commitment was Daniels, formerly of Minnesota. The six-foot-five, 315-pound tackle comes from Princeton High School, the same Cincinnati-area high school his cousin Paris Johnson, Jr. attended. He was not offered a scholarship by the Buckeyes out of high school. He did not play as a freshman in 2023 and appeared in all 12 games with four starts in the final four games of the year. Daniels surrendered one sack on 159 pass-blocking snaps on the year.
He transfers in with three years of eligibility remaining.
The other addition comes from Rice. Potentially the other book-end tackle for 2025, Onianwa has been a stalwart for the Owls’ offensive line. Over the last three seasons, the six-foot-six, 345-pound tackle made 34 starts. If you trust Pro Football Focus, he earned a 74.6 overall grade last year with a pass-blocking grade of 79.3. Last year, he had 350 pass-blocking snaps and allowed one sack.
Onianwa will only be in Columbus for one season.
Adding to the Rushmen
What could be the most underrated Ohio State transfer portal addition lies on the defensive line. The Buckeyes will have to replace all four starters on the line so there is an opportunity for anyone to step up. So, for the first time in the transfer portal era, Ohio State dipped into the FCS to snag Idaho State (FCS) star, Logan George.
Next year’s starters at defensive end are likely Caden Curry and Kenyatta Jackson, Jr. but Jim Knowles’ defense needs rotational pieces who aren’t a massive drop-off from the starters. George could, at least at the beginning, be one of those rotational pieces.
Being a massive fish in a tiny pond, George will have a learning curve when he steps onto Ohio State’s campus. The Buckeyes’ Week 1 matchup next year is Texas, so if he’s going to play, he’s going to have to show he can compete with the best of the best.
As a true freshman, George appeared in 10 games and finished with 31 tackles, four-and-a-half tackles for loss, one pass breakup, one forced fumble, and one fumble recovery. Last year, he broke out in a massive way. George started all 12 games for the Bengals and amassed 57 tackles, 19.5 tackles for loss, and six-and-a-half sacks. In the battle for The Potato State Trophy (yes, it’s real), George terrorized the Vandals for four tackles for loss in the blowout defeat.
Across 648 defensive snaps, George registered an overall PFF grade of 73.0. He comes to Ohio State with two years of eligibility remaining.
A Big Ten Star From Ohio
Like last year, the Ohio State transfer portal class was bolstered thanks to a head coach leaving a program. Last year, it was Nick Saban retiring from Alabama. This year, Purdue fired Ryan Walters and kicked off an exodus. While the Buckeyes missed out on stud safety Dillon Thieneman, they did earn the commitment of Ohio native, tight end Max Klare.
After redshirting in 2022, Klare got on the field for five games in 2023, logging just 196 yards off 22 receptions. He broke out in 2024 as the Boilermakers’ leading receiver. Klare topped the Purdue charts with 685 yards and four touchdowns off 51 catches. He is currently the only member of the Ohio State transfer portal class that suited up against the Buckeyes and he managed just two catches for 13 yards.
The Cincinnati native was considered to be the top tight end in the portal by 247Sports.
Klare has two years of eligibility remaining.
Adding a Veteran Presence
The running back room in Columbus for 2025 looks to be incredibly talented…but woefully inexperienced. Next year, it looked like the entire room would be two true sophomores (with 250 yards and two scores off 56 carries combined) and three true freshmen. No matter how good those five running backs look to be, the Buckeyes know they need to add a veteran presence. Enter C.J. Donaldson.
Initially recruited as a tight end, Donaldson quickly made the switch and caught on. In his three-year career with West Virginia, he’s run the ball 421 times for 2,058 yards and a whopping 30 touchdowns.
Donaldson could be a chance-of-pace back to go with the home-run hitters. He doesn’t have that breakaway speed but he does average nearly five yards per carry. He will come to Ohio State with just one year of eligibility remaining.
More Work to be Done
Signing five transfers before Christmas is a great start. The roster is going to look vastly different when the Buckeyes suit up against Texas on August 30. However, there are still concerns.
The largest concern could be at kicker. A theme of the Day era has been a deficiency of the special teams unit, specifically among the kickers. In an era where Group of 5 kickers are winning Lou Groza Awards and nailing 50-plus-yard field goals regularly, the fact Ohio State cannot roster a player who is reliable past 30 yards is concerning. There were several solid kickers in the portal, led by Groza semifinalist from UNLV, Caden Chittenden. As of now, former UCLA kicker Blake Glessner, Cincinnati’s Carter Brown, and Memphis’s Caden Costa are the three best uncommitted according to 247Sports.
The Buckeyes could look to add veteran depth to the cornerback and quarterback rooms. As it stands, to say Ohio State’s quarterback depth is inexperienced would be underselling it. If Lincoln Kienholz joins Devin Brown and Air Noland in the portal, the Buckeyes will be left with Julian Sayin and Tavien St. Clair with scholarships in the room.
All in all, Day has had a quality-over-quantity approach to the transfer portal. He’s going to need to bag a few more instant-impact players as he did last offseason to make sure Ohio State gets back to competing for the Big Ten and playing in the College Football Playoff.
The post Ohio State Gets Active in the Transfer Portal appeared first on Last Word on College Football.