After de-committing from Penn State early in August, PA OT Dorian Johnson (6’6″ 280 lbs 4-star) instantly reemerged as one of Ohio State’s top targets in the 2013 recruiting class.
Johnson’s new top three includes Ohio State, Pitt and Virginia Tech and he plans to take official visits to all three.
Optimistically, this is a two horse race between Ohio State and Pitt.
Pessimistically, Pitt is the clear favorite and Ohio State the clear underdog.
Pitt has plenty of advantages, including being the home-state school with a coaching staff (and offensive philosophy) that has perhaps the best track record of producing NFL linemen in college football (albeit that track record was built at Wisconsin).
Ohio State, on the other hand, is seemingly in a familiar position with this recruitment after making successful late pushes for OH OT Kyle Dodson and OH OT Taylor Decker just a year ago.
It is reasonable to think that Urban Meyer and his staff may pull off a successful late push for Johnson in a similar fashion this year.
A glimmer of hope for the Buckeyes comes from this exchange in a recent interview by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
When I asked Johnson if Pitt was now his top choice, he said, “Pitt and Ohio State.”
The fact that Johnson included Ohio State in his response isn’t the end of this recruitment, but it is certainly a better sign for the Buckeyes then not being included at all- especially when it would have been easy to do so given the leading nature of the question and the obvious expectations of the person asking the question.
Getting Dorian Johnson on campus will be a big step, and there is no reason to think he won’t make it for a game in Columbus sometime this fall.
He is definitely in the group of players that I’d most like to see join the 2013 class.
Here are some highlights:
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