No, he wasn't. He was the #69 overall player in the country in the composite:

https://247sports.com/Player/Ezekiel-Elliott-15623/high-school-3014/

The #5 all-purpose back. He was not some fringe 4 star and was a top 150 player to everyone. He was not a 3 star when he committed, look at his ranking history in the composite. He was a top 100 player there since the beginning of his recruitment. Yes, he was developed at OSU, but let's stop with this narrative that he was some low-rated recruit who needed serious development when he got to OSU. His senior film showed the great one-cut ability and explosion as well as the great top-end speed. He was a good receiver in HS. He was a good blocker in HS. I don't know where you guys get this stuff, it's extremely easy to verify with a 30 second Google search. Just because some other poster here once said that Zeke was an underrated recruit doesn't mean he was some 3 star fringe guy.

Not sure if serious about Zeke. He was in no way a "diamond in the rough". Anyone who watched his senior film knew he was one of if not the best RB in that class.

Milton is not flipping from Georgia.

I 100% agree with you, on paper, OSU should almost always beat UM. But that won't stop UM fans from getting pissed when OSU wins and it won't stop people outside the rivalry from comparing UM to OSU. It's the built in nature of the rivalry. For UM to win, OSU will have to have a soul-crushing injury or two or the UM coaches will have to out-coach their OSU counterparts. And I include developing lower ranked recruits as part of that out-coaching portion. Harbaugh, being a supposedly great coach, should be able to pull that off at least once or twice in four years. Especially because UM fans will tell you that the gap in talent is not that large (see MGoBlog). 

At the end of the day, OSU out-recruits UM because of their success and then beats UM because of their greater talent won on the recruiting trail. It's Harbaugh's job to start winning in one of those areas if he wants to break the cycle and so far he hasn't done either.

Blu, I upvote pretty much all of your comments, but this one is pretty biased. Despite the rankings being 3rd and 8th, there is a large gulf between the quality of OSU's and UM's 2020 classes. Any fan outside of the UM and OSU fanbases would say so as well. Frankly, Day really is running circles around Harbaugh in recruiting. Whether or not he runs circles around him on the sideline remains to be seen, though he did run circles around Harbaugh's defense last year.

Harbaugh's personality does not lend itself well to recruiting. When he first came on, you had some recruits talk about how unique and different he was. But now that they've not gotten in done on the field, unique and different has trended to weird, creepy, and maybe outright crazy. Rich/successful people are called eccentric, unsuccessful people are called crazy. Harbaugh is trending to the latter. If Day curbstomps him in their first match-up, Harbaugh will not recover on the recruiting trail.

I live just south of Raleigh. YoutubeTV for the win.

Best comment this week.

Never said you couldn't/shouldn't think that, just asked why you were surprised by it. Your reply makes perfect sense, it's a big jump from 247's ranking, which I personally put more stock into. But I also don't put as much stock into QB ranking for players who aren't even in their junior year yet. To me, junior year is when you start to see the truly elite QB prospects separate. The ones who have more than just physical gifts start to stand out.

Regardless, the difference between the 8th ranked QB (his 247 ranking) and 2nd ranked QB (his Rivals ranking) is often not much, depending on the class obviously. Let's circle back a year from now after junior film and camps between junior and senior year are complete.

I'm curious, why are you so surprised by it?

The percentage at OSU is slightly higher.

Thanks, Andy! Appreciate you throwing this out as I love watching Snyder and the WrestleBucks, but don't keep up with the typical wrestling schedule.

If this is true, you really have to wonder how Bert could have ever thought this was a good idea. Why did anyone ever approve paying that man millions of dollars to be the face of their school?

I mean, our old defensive staff tried really hard to avoid even the appearance of pursuing a CB last class.

Haha I'd love to see AE's archive of saved tweets for these kind of moments.

It's similar to the Shaq or Gronk rule for officials. Bigger, faster, more talented players don't get the benefit. During Big Ten play, every team that plays OSU will always get the benefit of the doubt in snap calls.

Harbaugh has actually been really quiet and reserved this offseason. I can't figure out if that should worry me...

I remember back when we all thought OSU was going to set a new precedent with its own 2020 class.

Gruden is garbage

$5 says these games never happen.

A couple of things -

1. Did you really just compare Tuf Borland to Chris Spielman? Really?

2. Chris was more athletic than Tuf ever will be.

It's the same argument people make about Ohio three-star recruits on here - "Wait! AJ Hawk was really freaking good! So we should take more Ohio 3-stars because AJ Hawk was good!" Stop using the extreme case to try and prove points about the typical case.

Tuf Borland seems like a smart, hard-working guy. He also has below average agility and speed. It's fine, he just shouldn't be the starter at MLB at Ohio State. He'll likely do just fine in life.

This is all well and good, but for a player like Borland, I don't think it'll have a big impact. Sometimes you just don't have the agility or flat-out speed to make it to the hole before the blocker or RB. Sometimes you just don't have the athleticism to stay with a RB, TE, or Slot while covering the middle of the field. You can diagnose instantly, but if you can't get to the spot before the other player or are too slow to force them to the sideline, what does it matter? Borland is a LB built for the 60's.

Birm has a great write-up on Thomas today:

https://lettermenrow.com/ohio-state-football-recruiting/ohio-state-buckeyes-recruiting-jaheim-thomas/

Great season by the Bucks. Obviously everyone would love for them to be champs, but they've squarely set themselves as the only team with any kind of shot at Penn St. And as other said above, thank you, Andy! I was never really into wrestling until you and this site started covering OSU's team. I read every article now and catch them on TV when I can. Keep up the good work!

Not too surprising, there hasn't been a lot of talk about him from practice. Lot of WR talent on the team and coming in.