The Scarlet and Gray

[Soapy]

that defense is loaded

would be a shame if they get bounced out early

[toysoldier00]

Reese is just racking up the DPOY awards now

He's been a beast

that defense is loaded

would be a shame if they get bounced out early

woah. let's just all relax.

[toysoldier00]

As Buckeye as it Gets – The Massillon Mauler and the Weight of an Ohio Football Saturday
By Colten Brooks on November 24, 2025


The Massillon Mauler is the first recruit to go from the historic program in the last decade.



Pauly O'Dwyer doesn’t look like a modern linebacker until you watch him move. At 6-foot-5 and 225 pounds, Ohio State’s first commitment in the 2026 class carries the kind of frame you usually see attached to tight ends or edge rushers, the kind that makes you double-check the roster sheet when he lines up at Mike.

Then the ball is snapped, and the picture sharpens into something Stark County has been producing for generations: a downhill, take-your-lunch-money linebacker who treats blockers as obstacles to be removed, not avoided. The difference is O’Dwyer brings that old-school thump in a new-age body, the same sort of violent athletic blend Ohio State fans have watched from Arvell Reese and Sonny Styles, only this one comes with a nickname that sounds like it was coined in a steel mill.

They call him “The Massillon Mauler,” and in Massillon, nicknames like that aren’t marketing. They’re earned.

O’Dwyer, a four-star prospect ranked 137th nationally and fifth in Ohio, is the rare high school defender whose highlight tapes are less about flashy chaos and more about a consistent, brutal certainty. He keys fast, triggers faster, and arrives with bad intentions. He’s ultra physical in the purest sense: he wants to meet guards in the hole, wants to take on blocks head-up, wants to make the tackle in a way that convinces the offense not to run that play again. He’s got the length to disrupt passing lanes, the speed to close space when backs think they’ve escaped, and the kind of tackling mechanics that suggest he’s been taught, from the start, that your job isn’t to hit, it’s to finish.

That’s the thing about Massillon Washington and, more broadly, Stark County football: players don’t just grow up with football around them. They grow up inside it. The sport is woven into the weekends, the schools, the families, and the identities in a way that’s hard to explain unless you’ve driven through northeastern Ohio on a Friday night and watched entire towns orient themselves around kickoff.

Ohio high school football is often described as tradition, but in places like Stark County it functions more like inheritance. Kids learn the lore before they learn the playbook. They know the names, the rivalries, the decades. They understand that wearing a certain jersey means you’re carrying something that existed before you and will exist after you.

Massillon Washington sits at the center of that universe. It’s one of the most historically significant programs in the state, a flagship for the idea that high school football in Ohio is not a warm-up act, it’s a stage. For generations, the Tigers have treated the sport with a seriousness that borders on sacred, building a culture where expectations are not whispered, they’re posted. That culture doesn’t just produce wins; it produces a specific type of player, the kind who sees contact as a language and pride as a responsibility.

Stark County’s football obsession isn’t an accident, either. Ohio became a football state because the sport had a way of matching the region’s character: industrial towns, work-first values, communities that prized toughness and discipline, schools that became gathering places. The game gave those towns a weekly story with stakes that felt immediate and personal.

Over time, that story turned into infrastructure, youth programs, coaching trees, packed stadiums, deep rosters, and a constant churn of kids who grew up treating football like a craft. It’s why Ohio has remained one of the sport’s talent pipelines for decades. The state doesn’t just produce players; it produces football people. And Stark County might be the most concentrated version of that phenomenon you’ll find.

O’Dwyer is a Stark County linebacker in the most honest sense. His game is built on downhill urgency, on meeting lead blocks, on keeping the front clean and making sure the ball carrier feels the full consequence of his decision. But the modern part shows up, too. He isn’t just a thumper. He can run. He can cover ground. He can match a tight end up the seam in a pinch and has the wingspan to make quarterbacks second-guess windows they usually trust. He’s the kind of high school Mike who doesn’t have to come off the field, which is exactly what Ohio State has been chasing at that position: versatile size with real violence.

When O’Dwyer committed, the first domino in the Buckeyes’ 2026 class, it wasn’t hard to see the appeal. It’s not just the measurements and ranking. It’s that he fits the idea Ohio State wants at linebacker right now: physically imposing, fast enough to play in space, aggressive enough to set a tone, and wired in a way that doesn’t require coaching staff to manufacture intensity. He shows up with it.

And that wiring matters even more this week, because it’s Michigan week, and in Ohio, especially in Stark County, Michigan week isn’t a slogan. It’s a mood.

O’Dwyer didn’t mince words when asked what the rivalry means to him.

“Where I’m from, you don’t grow up neutral about that game,” O’Dwyer said. “It’s not like, ‘Oh, it’s a big rivalry.’ It’s personal. It’s everything. You want to beat them, and you want to beat them bad. I’m not going to pretend otherwise. I want to beat the living **** out of Michigan.”

That’s Stark County honesty, delivered without ornament. And it’s exactly why Ohio State fans will love him long before he ever takes a snap in the Horseshoe.

Because the rivalry doesn’t just live in Columbus. It stretches into every high school locker room where kids grew up watching the game with their families, hearing the same stories, learning the same rules. It lives in a place like Massillon, where football already matters so much that the idea of beating Michigan becomes an extension of what you’re taught about pride and identity. When O’Dwyer says it’s personal, he’s not manufacturing a quote. He’s describing a default setting.

In that way, Pauly O’Dwyer is more than a recruiting win. He’s a cultural one. Ohio State didn’t just land a four-star linebacker with prototype size and a throwback streak; it landed a kid from one of the state’s most iconic programs, from the county that might care about football as intensely as any in America, who arrives already fluent in the language of the rivalry.

He’s the Massillon Mauler, a modern body carrying an old Ohio blueprint, and he’s heading into the biggest week on the Buckeyes calendar talking like someone who already understands exactly what he signed up for.

In Ohio, that’s not just a nice bonus. It’s the whole point.

Rank	Pos	Name	Height	Weight	High School	Home Town
	QB	Tyree Figurs	6'3"	190 lbs	Mission Hills	Mission Hills, CA
	WR	Ashton Ramsey	6'3"	190 lbs	Loyola Academy	Chicago, IL
	TE	Jordan Ivory	6'5"	235 lbs	Culver Academies	Culver, IN
	OT	Marcus Okam	6'7"	285 lbs	Pickerington Central	Pickerington, OH
	OT	Grady Austin	6'6"	305 lbs	Princeton	Cincinnati, OH
	OT	Derron Merriman	6'6"	300 lbs	Hilliard Bradley	Marysville, OH
	OT	Alex Jordan	6'7"	280 lbs	Paramus Catholic	Paramus, NJ
	IOL	George Crecelius	6'4"	285 lbs	Cy-Fair	Cypress, TX
	IOL	Thaddeus Roe	6'4"	290 lbs	Avon	Avon, IN
	IOL	David Weeks	6'4"	300 lbs	Janesville Parker	Janesville, WI
	DE	Deontae Savage	6'6"	240 lbs	Avon	Avon, IN
	DE	Ornell Mack	6'5"	240 lbs	Winton Woods	Cincinnati, OH
	DT	Vondree Eagles	6'3"	345 lbs	Reynoldsburg	Reynoldsburg, OH
	DT	Dillon Bridges	6'3"	290 lbs	Snider	Fort Wayne, IN
	LB	Pauly O'Dwyer	6'5"	215 lbs	Washington	Massillon, OH
	LB	Emmanuel Wooden	6'2"	210 lbs	Westerville South	Columbus, OH
	LB	Jaylen Smalls	6'2"	210 lbs	Glenville	Cleveland, OH
	LB	Avondre Lincoln	6'1"	200 lbs	Princeton	Cincinnati, OH
	CB	Teion Cherry II	6'1"	175 lbs	Wayne	Huber Heights, OH
	CB	Tremayne Shepley	6'1"	185 lbs	Greenville	Greenville, SC
	S	Bobby Jackson-Ruud	6'1"	190 lbs	St. Thomas Aquinas	Fort Lauderdale, FL
	S	Landon Bishop	6'0"	195 lbs	Whitmer	Toledo, OH
	P	David Procter	6'5"	170 lbs	Elder	Cincinnati, OH

[toysoldier00]

Playoff Week: The Final Saturday That Sets the Bracket

By Bailey Lloyd
November 25, 2025



Rivalry week is usually about emotion, trophies and grudges. This year it’s also a multi-conference math problem, and Saturday is the last chance to shape it before championship weekend. Here’s the cleanest way to understand what’s at stake, conference title races first, then the at-large and Group of Five picture.

Big Ten: One Rivalry Game, One Trap Game, One Door Open for Oregon

The Big Ten’s two undefeateds are in position to make this simple, but the final weekend offers enough chaos to redraw the bracket.

• No. 1 Ohio State (11-0) at No. 10 Michigan (9-2): If Ohio State wins, the Buckeyes clinch a spot in the Big Ten Championship Game for the first time in five years. If they lose, the door swings open for the teams behind them.
  No. 4 Indiana (11-0) at Purdue (2-9): Indiana is in a classic “just handle business” spot. A win locks up a title-game berth, assuming Ohio State also does its part.
  Oregon’s path: If either Ohio State or Indiana loses, Oregon moves next in line if it beats Washington. Oregon’s game is the conference’s pressure-release valve: it becomes instantly enormous if either unbeaten slips.
  Michigan’s path: If both Ohio State and Indiana lose, or if Ohio State and Oregon lose, Michigan would end up in Indianapolis.

The simplest Big Ten outcome: Ohio State beats Michigan, Indiana beats Purdue, and it’s Buckeyes–Hoosiers for the conference title.

SEC: Texas A&M controls the top line, Georgia lurks, Ole Miss waits for a double stumble

The SEC has a rare blend: one undefeated team and multiple one-loss contenders, plus a title-game projection that can change with a single upset.

• No. 2 Texas A&M (undefeated in SEC) at No. 19 Texas: Win and Texas A&M is in the SEC title game. Lose, and the tiebreaker web gets interesting fast.
  No. 13 Alabama (one SEC loss) at Auburn (5-6): Alabama is also in a win-and-in position. Alabama currently projects to face A&M due to the head-to-head edge over Georgia.
  No. 3 Georgia vs. Georgia Tech (ACC opponent): Georgia can’t improve its conference record this weekend, but it can benefit from someone else losing.
  No. 6 Ole Miss vs. Mississippi State (5-6): Ole Miss needs help, but the help is plausible.

SEC outcomes to track:

• If A&M wins and Alabama wins → SEC title game stays A&M vs. Alabama.
  If either A&M or Alabama loses → Georgia goes.
  If both A&M and Alabama lose → Ole Miss goes with a win over Mississippi State.

ACC: Two “win-and-in” teams, then a four-team tiebreaker mess
The ACC picture is unusually clean at the top... until it isn’t.

• SMU (8-3) at Cal: SMU is a one-loss conference team in a tough road spot. Win and SMU is in the ACC title game. Lose, and it becomes a tiebreaker scramble.
  Pittsburgh (8-3) vs. No. 12 Miami: Pitt is also win-and-in, but it draws the more dangerous opponent. Miami, meanwhile, is playing for its at-large life if it can’t reach the ACC title game.

If either SMU or Pitt loses, the ACC could produce a multi-team tie among two-loss conference teams that includes:

• No. 12 Miami (FL)
  No. 21 Georgia Tech (done with conference play, but playing Georgia)
  No. 20 Virginia (hosts Virginia Tech)
  Duke (6-5) (hosts Wake Forest)

In other words: SMU and Pitt can keep this tidy by winning. If they don’t, the ACC becomes a late-night spreadsheet.

Big 12: Texas Tech and BYU are aligned — Utah is the chaos pick

This is the most straightforward title-game race outside the Big Ten.

• No. 8 Texas Tech at West Virginia (4-7): Win and Tech likely punches its ticket.
  No. 11 BYU vs. UCF (5-6): Win and BYU likely punches its ticket.

If Texas Tech and BYU both win, they meet again for a Big 12 title rematch.
If either loses, No. 15 Utah can jump the line with a win at Kansas (6-5).

The at-large bubble: Miami, Vanderbilt, Utah, Alabama can’t afford mistakes

Several teams can secure playoff spots outright with wins, while others are essentially playing elimination games.

• Can clinch CFP spots with wins: Oregon, Michigan, Ole Miss, Oklahoma
  On the bubble (loss likely eliminates): Vanderbilt, Utah, Miami, Alabama

Key bubble games:

• Miami at Pitt: critical both for ACC positioning and at-large credibility.
  No. 14 Vanderbilt vs. No. 18 Tennessee: Vanderbilt needs this to stay alive.
  No. 7 Oklahoma vs. LSU (7-4): Oklahoma can remove doubt by winning.

Group of Five: American title game is nearly set

The Group of Five race is largely being decided in the AAC.

• No. 24 North Texas vs. Temple (5-6): Win and North Texas stays on track.
  No. 22 Tulane vs. Charlotte (1-10): Tulane is expected to advance.

If both win, they’ll meet for the AAC championship, and the winner would be positioned to claim the Group of Five playoff bid.

One more note: Notre Dame’s final box to check

No. 9 Notre Dame vs. Stanford (4-7): A win may be enough to secure a playoff spot without drama. A loss would invite it.

By the end of Saturday, most of the bracket won’t be a debate, it’ll be a list. The arguments will come later. The results that shape them come now.

[Soapy]

Do you plan on continuing this after CFB26 releases? Would like to see how some of those recruits pay out

[ShireNiner]

This OSU team is stacked. I can't see them losing in the playoffs.

[toysoldier00]

Do you plan on continuing this after CFB26 releases? Would like to see how some of those recruits pay out

Honestly, I'm pretty far ahead of this, so I think at the very least I'll post what happens from here. I guess it will depend on how much different the new game is versus 2026.

This OSU team is stacked. I can't see them losing in the playoffs.

Title favorites, no doubt.

[toysoldier00]

It's Game Week – Emmanuel Wooden Feels Like Michigan Week in Human Form
By Colten Brooks on November 25, 2025


Westerville South (Columbus, OH) linebacker Emmanuel Wooden is ready to get to work in at the Woody.



Michigan Week arrives in Columbus the same way it always does: not as a date on a calendar, but as a mood that settles over the city and sharpens everything around it.

It’s in the way strangers talk to each other in line for coffee. It’s in the Buckeye leaves hung up like talismans on office doors. It’s in the small, involuntary pause when someone says the word “Michigan,” like you’re supposed to spit afterward even if you’re in polite company.

And for Emmanuel Wooden, a Columbus kid, an Ohio State linebacker commit, and a long-time Buckeye supporter who grew up breathing this rivalry like winter air, it’s not a week so much as it’s the baseline.

“You don’t really learn what this game is,” Wooden said. “You grow up with it. It’s in your family, it’s in your neighborhood. You feel it. And when you get the chance to be part of it for real, it’s like… finally. This is what I’ve been waiting on.”

Wooden committed to Ohio State on June 28, becoming the Buckeyes’ 16th commitment in the class, the kind of pledge that barely creates a ripple on the national recruiting timeline because it seemed inevitable to everyone outside the Woody Hayes Athletic Center.

He’s a four-star linebacker from Westerville South, listed at 6-foot-1 and 215 pounds, the No. 380 player nationally and No. 14 in Ohio, respectable numbers that don’t scream “headline.” And that’s part of the point. Wooden has lived in the space between assumptions and attention for most of his recruitment: local prospect, Buckeye lean, not a drama-filled chase, no hat-on-the-table spectacle.

But those assumptions have started to get challenged by the one thing that always rearranges a recruiting board: film. Senior film, specifically. The kind scouts love because it shows the player after a full offseason of physical development and a full understanding of what he is. The kind that turns “solid take” into “why aren’t we talking about this guy more?”

What Wooden put on tape this fall has been hard to ignore, even for evaluators who typically need a splash of national competition to get excited. He hits like he’s trying to make a statement with every collision, not reckless, not out of control, but violent in a way that forces an offense to account for him. He’s athletic enough to erase angles in the run game, quick enough to arrive as the play is forming, and strong enough to finish when he gets there.

As a run-stopper, he plays with the decisive downhill trigger Ohio State linebackers are asked to have, and as a blitzer he shows a knack for timing, that half-second of patience before he turns into a shot through the A-gap.

“I want to be a problem,” Wooden said. “That’s the whole mindset. If you’re a linebacker at Ohio State, you’re supposed to be the guy nobody wants to see coming. I take pride in that.”

The Buckeyes’ staff does, too. While Wooden will need to improve in pass coverage, a fair note for most high school linebackers, especially ones who spend Friday nights as the hammer, there’s no mystery to why Ohio State is high on him. The physicality is obvious. The athleticism is real. The frame has room for more weight without sacrificing movement. And the most valuable part might be the thing that’s hardest to chart: he plays like he expects contact and welcomes it.

That’s a trait that translates in this rivalry, where the air gets tight and the game tends to punish hesitation. Michigan week, in Columbus, is partly about history, Woody and Bo, the Ten Year War, the way a single result can tint an entire season. But it’s also about identity.

Ohio State fans don’t just want to beat Michigan; they want to feel like Ohio State again while doing it. They want violence at the line of scrimmage. They want an edge. They want the game to look and sound like it matters.

Wooden understands that instinctively because he’s lived inside it. He’s the kid who watched The Game with adults who treated it like a family holiday and a family feud at the same time. He’s the kid who learned early that “up north” was not a direction so much as a warning label. And now he’s the kid who will spend this week hearing the same phrase from everyone he’s known his whole life: don’t lose.

“That’s the thing about being from here,” Wooden said. “Everybody has a story about this game. Everybody remembers where they were. And everybody lets you know what it means. I love that. That pressure? That’s a privilege.”

It’s easy to treat recruits as future pieces, to talk about them like projections and depth charts. Wooden’s story reads differently because he’s both a prospect and a reflection, of the state, of the city, of what Ohio football has always valued at linebacker.

The blueprint has never been complicated: run downhill, hit hard, play fast, and don’t blink when the moment gets big. Wooden checks the first two boxes in permanent marker, and senior film is making a compelling case that the third is there, too.

The fourth, the moment, will come soon enough. Whether Wooden sees the field against Michigan as a Buckeye will depend on time and development, not on vibes. But this week isn’t only about who plays Saturday. It’s also about why the program recruits the way it does, and why local kids still matter even in an era when rosters are stitched together from the portal.

Emmanuel Wooden isn’t the loudest name in Ohio State’s class, and he didn’t need a coast-to-coast recruitment to validate him. He’s a Columbus linebacker who committed early, took the expected path, and then spent his senior season making people reconsider how “expected” should be read.

In the biggest week on the calendar, that feels fitting. Michigan week is always about proving something, to the opponent, to the country, to yourself. Wooden has been doing that quietly all fall.

“I’ve been waiting for this,” he said. “And I’m not just talking about signing and getting there. I’m talking about representing this place the right way. Michigan week is different here. I want to be part of making it go the right way.”

Rank	Pos	Name	Height	Weight	High School	Home Town
	QB	Tyree Figurs	6'3"	190 lbs	Mission Hills	Mission Hills, CA
	WR	Ashton Ramsey	6'3"	190 lbs	Loyola Academy	Chicago, IL
	TE	Jordan Ivory	6'5"	235 lbs	Culver Academies	Culver, IN
	OT	Marcus Okam	6'7"	285 lbs	Pickerington Central	Pickerington, OH
	OT	Grady Austin	6'6"	305 lbs	Princeton	Cincinnati, OH
	OT	Derron Merriman	6'6"	300 lbs	Hilliard Bradley	Marysville, OH
	OT	Alex Jordan	6'7"	280 lbs	Paramus Catholic	Paramus, NJ
	IOL	George Crecelius	6'4"	285 lbs	Cy-Fair	Cypress, TX
	IOL	Thaddeus Roe	6'4"	290 lbs	Avon	Avon, IN
	IOL	David Weeks	6'4"	300 lbs	Janesville Parker	Janesville, WI
	DE	Deontae Savage	6'6"	240 lbs	Avon	Avon, IN
	DE	Ornell Mack	6'5"	240 lbs	Winton Woods	Cincinnati, OH
	DT	Vondree Eagles	6'3"	345 lbs	Reynoldsburg	Reynoldsburg, OH
	DT	Dillon Bridges	6'3"	290 lbs	Snider	Fort Wayne, IN
	LB	Pauly O'Dwyer	6'5"	215 lbs	Washington	Massillon, OH
	LB	Emmanuel Wooden	6'2"	210 lbs	Westerville South	Columbus, OH
	LB	Jaylen Smalls	6'2"	210 lbs	Glenville	Cleveland, OH
	LB	Avondre Lincoln	6'1"	200 lbs	Princeton	Cincinnati, OH
	CB	Teion Cherry II	6'1"	175 lbs	Wayne	Huber Heights, OH
	CB	Tremayne Shepley	6'1"	185 lbs	Greenville	Greenville, SC
	S	Bobby Jackson-Ruud	6'1"	190 lbs	St. Thomas Aquinas	Fort Lauderdale, FL
	S	Landon Bishop	6'0"	195 lbs	Whitmer	Toledo, OH
	P	David Procter	6'5"	170 lbs	Elder	Cincinnati, OH

[toysoldier00]

On the Line in Toledo – Landon Bishop, Borderball, and the Kind of Safety Ohio State Had to Have
By Colten Brooks on November 26, 2025


Whitmer (Toledo, OH) Safety Landon Bishop has been one of Ohio's best players in 2025.



There are places where Ohio State–Michigan is a rivalry, and then there are places where it’s an argument you inherit. Toledo is one of those places. It sits close enough to Ann Arbor to feel the pull, close enough to Columbus to live in the orbit, and old enough, as a region and as a football culture, to carry the echoes of why this game was never supposed to be polite.

When Michigan week arrives, it doesn’t just light up the big cities. It reaches for the border towns first, the places where loyalties split at Thanksgiving tables and the color of a sweatshirt can start a conversation you weren’t looking for.

“People act like it’s just football, but up here it’s not,” Toledo Whitmer safety Landon Bishop said. “You’ve got family on both sides. You’ve got neighbors on both sides. And everybody remembers. Everybody’s got something to say about it.”

To understand why the rivalry still hits different on the border, you have to rewind beyond the modern scoreboards and recruiting battles, back to the earliest tension between the states themselves. Ohio and Michigan have been staring each other down for nearly two centuries, long before the first kickoff in the Horseshoe.

The old disputes, political, geographic, cultural, created a natural friction, and football simply became the cleanest, most public way to settle it every November. The game grew into something that can hold an entire season hostage, something that both states treat as a referendum on identity. Michigan represents its own brand of pride, the idea that their way is the right way, and Ohio answers with the same stubborn conviction, only louder. On the border, that clash isn’t theoretical. It’s personal.

That’s why a recruit like Bishop makes sense as a Michigan-week story, even in late November with National Signing Day approaching and roster math dominating most conversations. Bishop isn’t just a four-star safety; he’s a Toledo kid who lived the rivalry as a family dynamic before it became a recruiting pitch. And when his recruitment heated up, the rivalry stopped being something he watched and started being something that tried to claim him.

Bishop, listed at 6-foot, 205 pounds, is the No. 105 player nationally, the No. 4 player in Ohio, and the No. 6 safety in the class. Ohio State desperately needed quality safeties in the 2026 cycle, and Bishop was the kind of take the staff couldn’t afford to miss, not just because he’s talented, but because his traits fit the modern game: range, coverage instincts, and athletic upside that doesn’t look finished yet.

He committed to Ohio State on April 9 as the Buckeyes’ 12th commitment, a pledge that, from the outside, felt inevitable. A top-100 Ohio prospect at a premium position, from a program that produces Power Five talent, choosing the in-state giant. Easy math. But the recruitment itself didn’t feel like that inside Bishop’s world, because the Wolverines and Notre Dame were real factors, and Toledo isn’t a place where those logos are abstract.

“It got serious and it got real fast,” Bishop said. “It wasn’t like I grew up only one thing. I’ve got people in my family who are Michigan fans, people who are Ohio State fans. So when those schools are actually calling you, actually recruiting you, you have to decide what you really want and who you really are.”

Ohio State’s pitch, ultimately, was about development and fit, and about need. The Buckeyes have been living in an era where safety play can’t be merely solid; it has to be difference-making, especially in a Big Ten that now asks defensive backs to solve spread offenses one week and punish downhill run games the next. Bishop’s evaluation reflects that.

He’s a very athletic safety with coverage instincts that jump off the screen. He’s been a standout on the 7-on-7 circuit for two years, where the game is space, anticipation, and pattern recognition, all traits that translate when Saturdays turn into third-and-7 and the window is closing.

He’s also a “4.5 guy” with upside, the kind of speed that gives coaches options. With Bishop, you can imagine the framework: a safety who can carry slots, match tight ends, erase routes with range, and survive when offenses try to isolate him. His ceiling is why he’s rated where he is, and why Ohio State treated him like a priority in a class where the margin for error at safety was slim.

There are, of course, edges to sand down. Bishop will need to improve his run support and get stronger, the Big Ten has a way of exposing safeties who don’t want to tackle, and Ohio State safeties get asked to be linebackers in certain fits. And yes, there’s the funny flaw scouts keep bringing up: he can’t catch. Don’t expect interceptions. That part of his profile reads like a joke until you watch the film and see a guy consistently in the right place, breaking on the ball, arriving on time, and then watching it hit the turf anyway.

“I know what people say about my hands,” Bishop said, laughing. “I’m not going to sit here and pretend I’m Ed Reed. But I’m around the ball. That’s the point. I’m going to make it hard on you. I’m going to make you throw it somewhere else.”

That’s the kind of response Ohio State can work with. Interceptions are great, but the best safeties in college football change games in subtler ways, too: by closing windows, by eliminating options, by forcing quarterbacks to hold the ball long enough for the pass rush to arrive. If Bishop becomes that type of player in Columbus, the Buckeyes won’t care if the box score shows zero picks as long as the offense looks uncomfortable.

And then there’s the layer that makes him feel especially relevant this week: Bishop didn’t just choose Ohio State; he chose a side in the one rivalry that’s always been closest to his life. He chose it knowing exactly what it means to the border, to Toledo, to the state, and to the people in his own family who will hate the decision at least one Saturday a year.

“It’s bigger up here because you’re right in it,” Bishop said. “You hear it from everybody. But that’s also why I wanted to do it. I wanted to represent Ohio. I wanted to be part of the team that finishes it the right way.”

In a recruiting cycle where Ohio State needed safeties who can run, cover, and grow into NFL bodies, Bishop looks like the kind of cornerstone that steadies a class. In a rivalry week where everything gets filtered through identity, he also looks like the kind of commit who understands the stakes without needing them explained. Toledo teaches you that early.

On the border, you don’t get to treat Ohio State–Michigan like a game. You pick a side, you live with it, and then you spend the rest of your life measuring November by whether your side won.

Landon Bishop has already made his choice. Now he gets to turn it into something.

Rank	Pos	Name	Height	Weight	High School	Home Town
	QB	Tyree Figurs	6'3"	190 lbs	Mission Hills	Mission Hills, CA
	WR	Ashton Ramsey	6'3"	190 lbs	Loyola Academy	Chicago, IL
	TE	Jordan Ivory	6'5"	235 lbs	Culver Academies	Culver, IN
	OT	Marcus Okam	6'7"	285 lbs	Pickerington Central	Pickerington, OH
	OT	Grady Austin	6'6"	305 lbs	Princeton	Cincinnati, OH
	OT	Derron Merriman	6'6"	300 lbs	Hilliard Bradley	Marysville, OH
	OT	Alex Jordan	6'7"	280 lbs	Paramus Catholic	Paramus, NJ
	IOL	George Crecelius	6'4"	285 lbs	Cy-Fair	Cypress, TX
	IOL	Thaddeus Roe	6'4"	290 lbs	Avon	Avon, IN
	IOL	David Weeks	6'4"	300 lbs	Janesville Parker	Janesville, WI
	DE	Deontae Savage	6'6"	240 lbs	Avon	Avon, IN
	DE	Ornell Mack	6'5"	240 lbs	Winton Woods	Cincinnati, OH
	DT	Vondree Eagles	6'3"	345 lbs	Reynoldsburg	Reynoldsburg, OH
	DT	Dillon Bridges	6'3"	290 lbs	Snider	Fort Wayne, IN
	LB	Pauly O'Dwyer	6'5"	215 lbs	Washington	Massillon, OH
	LB	Emmanuel Wooden	6'2"	210 lbs	Westerville South	Columbus, OH
	LB	Jaylen Smalls	6'2"	210 lbs	Glenville	Cleveland, OH
	LB	Avondre Lincoln	6'1"	200 lbs	Princeton	Cincinnati, OH
	CB	Teion Cherry II	6'1"	175 lbs	Wayne	Huber Heights, OH
	CB	Tremayne Shepley	6'1"	185 lbs	Greenville	Greenville, SC
	S	Bobby Jackson-Ruud	6'1"	190 lbs	St. Thomas Aquinas	Fort Lauderdale, FL
	S	Landon Bishop	6'0"	195 lbs	Whitmer	Toledo, OH
	P	David Procter	6'5"	170 lbs	Elder	Cincinnati, OH

[toysoldier00]

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