David Sanders Jr. is officially headed to Tennessee.
After delaying his signing by one day, the five-star offensive tackle officially signed with the Volunteers on Thursday, ending Ohio State’s hopes of flipping the top-ranked OT into its 2025 recruiting class.
Oh, you thought we were done?
— Tennessee Football (@Vol_Football) December 5, 2024
Home sweet home!
a BIG addition to the OL@DavidLSandersJr | #RockyTop25 pic.twitter.com/DmaQVTjUkV
While Sanders committed to Tennessee in August, the Buckeyes never gave up on recruiting him, and felt they had a chance to flip Sanders when he visited Ohio State two weekends ago for the Buckeyes’ penultimate game of the regular season vs. Indiana. Those efforts, however, ultimately came up short for the Buckeyes.
Despite missing out on Sanders, Ohio State still signed 26 players on Wednesday and Thursday, putting together a class that’s ranked fifth in 247Sports’ composite rankings. Only three of those players, however, are offensive linemen – Carter Lowe, Jayvon McFadden and Jake Cook – and the Buckeyes aren’t expected to sign any more players during the early signing period.
Ryan Day acknowledged that the Buckeyes are going to have to look to add more talent on their offensive line, suggesting that they will be aggressive in pursuing offensive linemen in the transfer portal.
“That's the one area there that I feel like we got to make sure that we're going to be moving forward into the next few weeks addressing. We have to do that,” Day said Wednesday. “I think Jayvon is really going to give us something at tackle. Carter's a swing guy. Jake's a local guy. All three of those guys we feel great about. But at the end of the day, we got to make sure we have the numbers that we need, making sure we have the depth that we need.
“In today's day and age, it's a little bit different on how you put the roster together. It's not just about the high school guys and recruiting. You have to make sure that you have your numbers and you have your depth. So whether it's through retention or maybe a guy in the portal here or there, that's what it's going to come down to.”
