Welcome to the Skull Session.
Emphasis on the & Counting in this post:
50 Buckeyes & Counting Drafted in the Ryan Day era
— Ohio State Football (@OhioStateFB) April 22, 2026
#NFLDraft | #DevelopedHere pic.twitter.com/QY8ZFsYVIH
Have a good Thursday.
IMPERSONATE YOUR COACH. Ohio State's players impersonated their coaches after one of the team's recent practices. They were too good.
These impersonations are hilarious pic.twitter.com/mEhSUaDcIA
— Eleven Warriors (@11W) April 22, 2026
All of the impersonations were hilarious, but the ones of OG Walt take the cake for me. Those were hilarious!
DRAFT WEEK=SILLY SEASON. When it’s NFL draft week, everyone loses their minds!
Like this defensive back coach, who told The Athletic’s Bruce Feldman that he would take former Purdue and Oregon safety Dillon Thieneman over Caleb Downs. What’s even worse is that another defensive back coach agreed.
“I would take Thieneman over Downs,” said DB coach No. 2. “Thieneman is one of the more versatile safeties I’ve seen come out in the last few years. I feel good about him in the deep part of the field, about him in and around the box and about him in coverage, especially from a safeties standpoint. I loved the movement skills from him at the combine. He looked really fluid and loose. There’s a lot to like with him.”
DB coach No. 1 said it wouldn’t surprise him if some team took Thieneman ahead of Downs because he thinks the Oregon DB is that good.
“I think Dillon Thieneman is pretty special,” he said. “He’s ready right now. I think he’s the best tackler I’ve seen in years, but he’s also got the speed and flexibility to turn and run. I think he has first- and second-level instincts and can fit runs like a linebacker, but he can run like the wind in the back end.”
These coaches are not serious people.
Luckily, there are still some people in the football world with some sense.
“There’s been a recurring trend that I keep hearing with Thieneman pushing Downs. I do not see that,” said DB coach No. 3. “I think coaches are nervous because they haven’t seen him cover or in the deep part of the field. This guy sat down at his formal interview and installed his defense, and then talked about how he would play it in our defense. He knew the rules of our defense before he came into the meeting. Nobody’s doing that. There’s a premium on intelligence at the safety position in the NFL, more so than people not in the NFL understand. And the way the game is going with limited practices and limited practice reps, that premium is only becoming more valuable. Defensive coaches are asking players to do more. Downs is invaluable. And he’s an elite tackler.
“His ability to react to what he sees in the deep part of the field, although it’s sparing on this year’s tape, is still really strong. I think he’s a top-10 pick. I have no concerns about him covering. If you’re playing him at nickel, then yeah, I’d be worried about him covering. But this is a safety. He’s gonna take the fourth hardest matchup. When is the safety covering the second-hardest guy to cover? If that’s your defense, then that’s a bad defense.”
Coaches who spoke about Arvell Reese were also of sound mind.
In a nutshell: The 6-4, 241-pound Reese, the No. 1 overall prospect on Dane Brugler’s top 100, was preferred by three of the four defensive line coaches I spoke to.
“He is the best of the bunch,” said DL coach No. 3. “He has everything: the violence, the power, the strike, the length, the bend, the acceleration. His pro day was so impressive. He’s the best defensive player for sure. He’s the best edge defender I’ve seen in a few years. I’m not sure about pure pass rush, but edge defender, yes.”
“I think he’s the best,” said DL coach No. 1, who thinks Reese is “a tad more athletic” than Bailey. “He’s pretty dynamic, but I’d just put him at one position and let him be. Learn it. Watch his film; it’s a lot of off-ball. When you come into the league, you gotta have clean eyes right away.”
Reese, who ran a 4.46 40 at the NFL Scouting Combine, was a one-year starter for Ohio State and didn’t put up eye-popping stats (6.5 sacks in 2025), but his film had college and pro coaches raving.
“He’s just so raw,” said DL coach No. 4. “He has everything. He has the burst, the bend and the power. But everything is so new to him. You have to explain to him that this is what you work and why you’re working it. But once you tell him why or the mistake that he made, he’s not going to make it again.”
Thanks be to these coaches, who helped keep me from turning into the Joker.
“THE BEST PLAYER ON THAT FIELD.” This week, I learned Caleb Downs’ uncle (on his mother’s side) is Dré Bly, a two-time Pro Bowler who won a Super Bowl with the St. Louis Rams in 1999 (he was teammates with Orlando Pace and Lorenzo Styles Sr.!), made another Super Bowl appearance in 2001 and finished his 11-year career with 484 tackles, five sacks, 20 forced fumbles, nine fumble recoveries, 43 interceptions and eight total touchdowns.
Go Long’s Tyler Dunne interviewed Bly before the NFL draft to learn what makes Downs special.
Bly’s answer?
A lot.
“He is (special). He is,” Bly said. “He didn’t work out. People are questioning his speed. When you play as well as he played, you don’t need to work out. His film represents what he is. He’s done everything you can imagine as a college football player. The same way Travis Hunter doesn’t need to work out, Caleb Downs doesn’t need to work out. And so again, if you know what you’re looking for when you evaluate tape, then if you go back and evaluate all of his tapes since he started playing football, you’ll see the same human being on the football field. He’s the best player on that field. And so you see correctly. That’s who he is.”
Later, Bly said, “If you watch and dissect how fast he played on the football field, why do you need him to work out? He’s the real deal, man. He’s everything that people imagine. He’s more athletic than any other defensive player in the game. His instincts, his awareness, his smarts. They’re going to get every bit of the player they’re supposed to get when they draft him as a top 10 player. And that’s a multiple Pro Bowl type of player that has the ability to be a Hall of Fame player. I don’t expect anything less or anything different coming out of Caleb.”
As if Bly hadn’t endorsed Downs enough, he also said this — and remember this is coming from a Super Bowl champion, one-time All-Pro and two-time Pro Bowler in the NFL, as well as a two-time All-American at North Carolina.
“He surpassed everything that I’ve done, and I’m in the College Football Hall of Fame. And he’ll one day be in the College Football Hall of Fame. He won a Thorpe Award. I went 0-for-2 with the Thorpe. I was a finalist twice. Didn’t win that. He won the national championship. He won a state championship in high school. So this guy has always won. He’s always been the best player on the field on a really, really good team. And so now they’re going to get one hell of a ball player once you hear his name called.”
What I shared is, like, a third of what Bly had to share about his nephew. He also called Downs “the complete package,” compared him to Brian Dawkins and Ed Reed and said Downs “eats and breathes and sleeps football.”
Downs is one of a kind, man.
I will miss him at Ohio State, but I cannot wait to see what he becomes at the next level.
MORE THAN A GAME. Arvell Reese will hear his name called early at the NFL draft on Thursday, but his path to that moment has never been just about football.
Eight years ago, Reese’s life nearly changed forever when his mother, Maeko Walker, suffered a stroke during one of his brother’s games.
“Doctors told my family I wasn’t going to make it,” Walker told Andscape's Branson Wright.
Reese, then in middle school, suddenly didn’t care about the sport he loved.
“I didn’t want to play football anymore,” he said.
Walker survived, but the road back wasn’t easy — and neither was Reese’s.
Long before Reese became a standout linebacker at Ohio State, his mother had built football into something bigger than a game. With Reese’s father incarcerated and tragedy striking the family early, she made it her mission to keep her sons — and plenty of other kids — surrounded by structure. She organized rides, cooked meals, checked grades and did whatever it took to keep players on the field and out of trouble.
“I looked at all of them like they were my sons,” Walker said.
That structure wavered as she recovered from her stroke, and Reese briefly lost his way. When he transferred to Glenville, head coach Ted Ginn Sr. didn’t start with football — he started with accountability. Reese arrived with a GPA below 1.0 and a lot of uncertainty about his future.
“No one is coming on a white horse to save you,” Ginn told him. “You have to take responsibility for your life.”
Reese bought in. The grades improved. The production followed. He became a two-time Academic All-Big Ten honoree at Ohio State, earned All-American honors and now projects as a potential top-five pick.
But Reese knows the most important part of his story happened long before draft night.
“If it wasn’t for my mother and Coach Ginn, I don’t know where I’d be,” Reese said. “If it wasn’t for Ginn, I wouldn’t have gone to college. I owe him everything.”
Reese’s journey to the NFL is a wonderful reminder that talent can open doors — but it’s the people who provide accountability, belief and structure that ultimately determine how far someone walks through them.
SONG OF THE DAY. "Daisies" - Justin Bieber, live at Coachella.
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