Tag: Jack Sawyer

Ohio State football star receives massive bump in ‘College Football 25’

Ohio State football star receives massive bump in College Football 25 #GoBucks

Ohio State football will be kicking off against the Nebraska Cornhuskers at Noon on Saturday and will hope to show off some defensive improvement after a disappointing loss to the Oregon Ducks. On the virtual gridiron, however, we don’t need to wait until Saturday to see improvements as the latest update for EA Sports’ “College Football 25” gave a large ratings boost to one Buckeye superstar.

Jeremiah Smith has been setting the college world on fire and EA Sports’ has apparently noticed as he is now rated at 90 overall, which is an increase of six total points. Few would argue against this bump because the freshman phenom receiver has already tallied 32 receptions for 553 yards and seven touchdowns.

Offensive tackle, Josh Simmons, also received a ratings boost of five to make his new overall 90. Edge rusher, Jack Sawyer  and interior offensive lineman, Donovan Jackson, received moderate bumps increasing their ratings by one. Sawyer is now a 90 overall and Jackson sits at 92.

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Chiefs scouting report: Ohio State Buckeyes DE Jack Sawyer

Ohio State Buckeyes defensive end Jack Sawyer could be a target for the Kansas City #Chiefs in the 2025 NFL draft.

The Kansas City Chiefs have a few long-term answers at defensive end. Mike Dana signed a contract extension in April to remain with the team through the 2026 season, and George Karlaftis is trending toward earning an extension after his rookie deal expires. The Chiefs are still missing a reliable third option along the edge.

Ohio State Buckeyes defensive end Jack Sawyer’s development took a massive leap in 2023. He uses a quick first step to get off the line and engage in hand-to-hand combat with the offensive tackle. His active and violent hands generate some knockback on contact.

Sawyer’s pass rush arsenal includes converting speed to power, swims, club-swims, spins, long-arms, rips, and cross-chops. While he knows a large variety of moves, Sawyer’s timing and deployment of his pass rush plan are inconsistent. He lacks elite bend to beat tackles around their outside shoulders consistently but gets low enough to turn the corner at the top of the arc.

Sawyer often relies on countering into the B-gap. He pushes linemen vertically before using his hands and momentum to pry open the B-gap and attack inside. Sawyer also uses inside swim, spin, and club counters, but he telegraphs these moves and makes them too easy to mirror.

Sawyer took his run defense to another level in 2023. He sets the edge well and times his block-shedding to separate from linemen and bring down the ball carrier. Sawyer plays with impressive effort in pursuit and delivers some big hits. His anchor gives out at the point of attack occasionally.

Sawyer and his teammate, J.T. Tuimoloau, form one of college football’s best pass-rush duos. Either defensive end could be in play for the Chiefs in the second round.

Ohio State travels to Eugene to face No. 3 Oregon on Oct. 12 at 6:30 p.m. CST. Both programs are 5-0 and feature multiple top-100 prospects. Oregon is the first of four ranked Big Ten teams remaining on Ohio State’s schedule.

Steelers scouts swarm Week 6, Ohio State vs Iowa: Finding future stars

The Steelers are preparing for the future! Pittsburgh sent out scouts to witness some of College Football’s best from Ohio State and Iowa.

From Omar Khan aggressively pursuing a trade for Davante Adams to preparation for next year’s draft, there is a lot to love about this team’s future. Pittsburgh’s scouting team is looking to keep the ‘Khan Artist’ happy with the CFB matchups this week.

It was reported on Saturday morning that Pittsburgh was one of ten teams to send personnel to scout the Ohio State vs Iowa matchup. Pittsburgh made a decision, one that only a select few of these ten teams made, to send more than one scout to the game.

Several dominant and key players from next year’s draft will be showcasing their talent in hopes of becoming top draft selections, such as Ohio State’s WR Emeka Egbuka, EDGE Jack Sawyer, RB Quinshon Judkins, OT Josh Simmons, CB Denzel Burke, and EDGE JT Tuimoloau, to name a few. The University of Iowa also has some aspiring 2025 NFL Draft prospects, like OG Sebastian Castro, DB Xavier Nwankpa, and RB Kaleb Johnson.

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2025 NFL Draft first impression: Jack Sawyer, LB, Ohio State

2025 NFL Draft first impression on versatile Ohio State OLB Jack Sawyer entering the 2024 college football season

Ohio State EDGE Jack Sawyer was a player many expected to declare for entry into the 2024 NFL Draft. When Sawyer opted to return to the Buckeyes instead of being a likely Day 2 pick, it immediately vaulted the talented Columbus-area native into high prominence for the 2025 draft.

Sawyer has moved between the “JACK” backer and a more traditional defensive end in Ohio State’s scheme. It allows him to rush the passer but also set an edge and use his length in space.

In the NFL, Sawyer looks more like a standard 4-man front DE. He’s got impressive length at 6-foot-5 and 260 pounds, and his upper-body and shoulder strength is above average for his size. Sawyer can set a hard edge and get into the pads of a tackle or tight end, jolting them upright and holding the perimeter in the run game. While it’s been inconsistent, Sawyer can also jolt and then shed to locate the ball on outside runs and also screens and swing passes.

As a pass rusher Sawyer is more of a high-effort, power-to-speed style than a tactician or someone who will bend the edge. His ankles and hips are tighter than desired, and his initial quickness and burst off the snap appear average in an NFL prospect context. Sawyer has worked on developing more pass rush moves, and his cross-chop and inside rip moves need to keep growing. He’s very adept at working in concert with other defenders; his ability to “contain rush” on the backside opposite JT Tuimoloau is a very effective representation of Sawyer’s optimal NFL usage–a strong-side DE opposite a more dynamic rusher.

Unless Sawyer develops more suddenness and bend as a rusher, that’s who he will be. That is the class of player that is typically a 3rd-4th round pick, a la Derrick Barnes of the Lions or D.J. Johnson of the Panthers.

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Former 5-star recruit Jeremiah Smith is impressing Ohio State teammates

Jeremiah Smith is impressing his Ohio State teammates

Jeremiah Smith is certainly off to a strong start to his college career as the former five-star recruit has left quite the impression at Ohio State.

And Smith, a class of 2024 recruit who enrolled at Ohio State in January, had his Buckeyes teammates talking this week at Big Ten Media Days.

Ohio State defensive end Jack Sawyer said that Smith is a special talent. As a five-star coming out of Florida, Smith was being talked about as the top player in the nation in his recruiting class.

ESPN ranked him as the fourth-best recruit in the nation. As a senior at Chaminade-Madonna (Hollywood, Florida) Smith has 90 catches for 1,389 receiving yards and 19 touchdowns.

Sawyer, a former five-star recruit in his own right, has been impressed by what he has seen from the freshman wide receiver. According to On3, Sawyer said that Smith has lived up to the hype.

“That kid is just special, man. That’s the only word I can use to describe him,” Sawyer said according to On3.

“Having been in his shoes, meaning being a five-star recruit and having a lot of hype around him coming in, I was like, ‘Man, I just want to see him practice a couple of times.’ I don’t want him to feel like if he doesn’t play this year or if he doesn’t live up to the hype his freshman year then, you know, but then I saw him for the first time at the first practice. I was like, ‘holy sh-t, this kid’s good’.”

Last season, Sawyer had 48 total tackles and 6.5 sacks. To read the full story from On3 about Sawyer, click here.

Ohio State won an intense and difficult recruiting battle to land Smith, fending off challenges from in-state Florida State and Miami to land one of the nation’s top recruits.

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Ohio State football star defends head coach Ryan Day

Ohio State star defends Ryan Day #GoBucks

After losing “The Game” three times in a row, Ryan Day has received some heavy criticism. Most of the soundbites and news clippings coming from Big Ten media days are surrounding the extremely high expectations that Ohio State has this upcoming season. The other hot topic is the temperature of Day’s seat.

The players are not immune to this and Jack Sawyer came to the defense of his head coach. “I think coach Day is the only coach I’d want to play for in college football, I’d commit to him a hundred times over if I could,” said Sawyer. “So that’s why, when we talk about coming back, a lot of us have felt like we’re his first real recruiting class. And we kind of all felt like we let him down in a sense of not reaching the goals that we set out to do when we signed our name on the dotted line. Going through the things we’ve gone through the past few years with coach Day definitely feels like we’ve gone through them hand in hand.”

Day and Sawyer will always have a unique connection given that the five-star defensive lineman was Day’s first commit, which took place way back in 2019. Sawyer was a vital part of that 2021 recruiting class and played the role of recruiter as well, convincing other stars to give Ohio State a chance.

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Ohio State player says Ryan Day ‘unfairly criticized’ over Michigan losses

After losing three straight games to rival Michigan football, Ohio State DE Jack Sawyer defends his head coach Ryan Day.

INDIANAPOLIS — It’s been tough sledding lately in Columbus, Ohio. No matter how good the Buckeyes have been, there’s been a dark cloud over Ohio State, having lost to rival Michigan football the past three years.

Winning The Game had started to appear to be OSU’s birthright, given the results dating back to Jim Tressel’s tenure in Columbus. But after former Wolverines head coach Jim Harbaugh said at Big Ten media days in 2021 that Michigan would beat Ohio State, win the Big Ten, or die trying, things turned around in Ann Arbor in a hurry.

Now it’s the 2024 iteration of Big Ten media days and the Ohio State contingent has its crack at dispelling media narratives on day one. Senior OSU edge rusher Jack Sawyer spent some of his time on the dais backing his head coach, Ryan Day, after the past three years of losses.

“It’s a tough thing to look at,” Sawyer said. “If you ask Coach Day, Coach Day is a man enough to sit up here and tell you that’s part of the job he signed up to do.”

Sawyer went further, noting that the narratives have targeted his head coach.

Day went from being something of a wunderkind to being 1-3 in the rivalry. There were moments where either Day was overconfident (behind closed doors, he said in 2020 that the Buckeyes would hang 100 on the Wolverines) or one of his cohorts was (receivers coach Brian Hartline proclaimed that what OSU did in the dark would come to light in 2022 before Michigan won, 45-23). Sawyer says that it’s the players’ fault and that Day doesn’t deserve any of the criticism he’s getting from the media over the past three years.

“Me being a guy who would go to war for him any day, regardless of the topic, I think that he gets wrongly criticized over a bunch of stuff,” Sawyer said. “A bunch of junk comes up after — comes out after we lost to those guys about him not caring. Which is completely — couldn’t be more wrong. So I think he does get unfairly criticized at times but he knows what he’s signed up to do and we’ve all signed up to do those same things as well — we’ve fallen short as well. If anything, it doesn’t go back on him, it comes back on us as players and that’s why we decided to come back.”

This year, the Buckeyes hope that things will go back in their favor, having loaded up both via recruiting and the transfer portal. Meanwhile, Michigan football will be breaking in a first-year head coach in Sherrone Moore and will have a new starting quarterback.

The Game will take place at noon on November 30 in Columbus.

Ohio State football announces its representatives for Big Ten Media days

The three Buckeyes will join Ryan Day in Indianapolis #GoBucks

With the season quickly approaching, the first sign of the football calendar starting is the Big Ten Media days. On Thursday, the Ohio State football program announced who will join head coach [autotag]Ryan Day[/autotag] in Indianapolis, Indiana.

The three Buckeyes chosen are wide receiver [autotag]Emeka Egbuka[/autotag], cornerback [autotag]Denzel Burke[/autotag], and defensive end [autotag]Jack Sawyer[/autotag]. The choices make plenty of sense because each of the players have made significant contributions during their Ohio State careers.

Each one of them are seniors, which shouldn’t come as a surprise. It’s a right of passage to be one of the few select players to represent the Buckeyes at the event.

It will be very interesting to see what each one of them says about the upcoming season, but we do know they will represent Ohio State well in Indy.

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Ohio State football names its three ‘Dudes of the Week’

Three more ‘Dudes of the Week’ announced by the Ohio State football program. #GoBucks

It can be a bit slow during the offseason for the Ohio State creative team that pumps out social media content, but there’s some things to look for. This offseason, the football program has been naming its “Dudes of the Week” and we have the latest three to share with you.

According to a post on “X,” the three “Dudes of the Week” for the week ending with June 22 are two you won’t be surprised about, and one more that must have had one whale of a week.

Everybody has heard the praises and seen some highlights coming out of workouts from new generational wide receiver talent Jeremiah Smith, and he is one of the the players named. Another is senior Jack Sawyer, who should pair up with book-end J.T. Tuimoloau to comprise arguably the best edge-rushing tandem in the country,

The third player named is tight end Patrick Gurd, who hasn’t really gotten a lot in the way of mention, but he too must have put in the work last week. Could it be that he’s pressing for playing time this fall? We’ll have to see.

Here is the social media post announcing the three “Dudes of the Week” for your viewing pleasure.

Stay with us as we continue to highlight news, video, recruiting buzz, and more this offseason as we plow ahead towards the start of fall camp and beyond.

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Ohio State ranks third in CBS Sports defensive front seven rankings

Ohio State ranks third in CBS Sports defensive front seven rankings #GoBucks

The good people over at CBS Sports are continuing to release their positional group rankings and one of the recent posts come from David Cobb in regard to defensive front sevens. It should come as no surprise that Ohio State was not No. 1 on this list, but landing at third is an honor in its own right. It needs to be noted that the defensive front seven includes both the defensive line and linebackers. The Buckeyes will be breaking in new starters on the second level of the defense and that likely held them back on this list.

Jack Sawyer, J.T. Tuimoloau, and Tyleik Williams are All-American candidates on the defensive line, but it is understandable to deduct points due to the inexperience at linebacker. Most expect C.J. Hicks to immediately become a star, but the wait and see attitude is fair.

The Georgia Bulldogs were the top selection on the list, which makes sense considering their plethora of future NFL talent on their defense. The Michigan Wolverines landed second on the list. Michigan has a few studs that Ohio State fabs are extremely familiar with like Mason Graham and Kenneth Grant.

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