Media was permitted to watch about 25 minutes of Ohio State’s practice on Monday, featuring a few individual drills, stretching lines, a passing skeleton drill and then a brief look at something approximating a full-team scrimmage for about four minutes. Here’s our brief practice report, featuring just about everything that there was to see at the Woody Hayes Athletic Center.
- The quarterbacks remained in roughly the same order through the entire period that was available to media: C.J. Stroud, Jack Miller, Kyle McCord, J.P. Andrade.
- None of the quarterbacks looked fantastic or terrible in what we saw. Stroud opened a passing skeleton session from the 5-yard line with a nice touchdown pass into the corner of the end zone. He completed his second pass short of the end zone to Austin Kutscher.
- Miller missed on his first pass to Jaxon Smith-Njigba, throwing a corner route about a yard over the sophomore’s head in the back of the end zone. He held the ball for about five seconds on the second throw before finding Marvin Harrison Jr. in the end zone, though the defense earned plaudits for that play (there was no pass rush). Miller’s third pass was another corner route overthrow, this time to Kutscher.
- The Buckeyes moved back to the 10-yard line for McCord, who delivered a dart on an out route to Jeremy Ruckert for a touchdown on his first pass.
- McCord’s second pass went to an Emeka Egbuka on a fade to the opposite side of the field and bounced right off of his hands, but the freshman wideout couldn’t hang on. McCord’s third pass was another touchdown, this time on a quick out after he shifted up in the pocket and threw on the run. McCord was the best of the bunch in this drill.
- Stroud took the field again after McCord from the 10-yard line and nearly found Garrett Wilson on his first pass, but Lloyd McFarquhar broke up the pass in the air. Stroud’s second throw flew right over Jayden Ballard’s head on a dig route. The final throw of the drill came from Stroud and went to Sam Wiglusz on a drag route short of the end zone.
- Not much stood out in the other individual drills, though Ohio State did showcase some defensive back groupings in a triangle drill (outside cornerback/inside cornerback/safety). The groups were as follows: Tyreke Johnson/Cameron Martinez/Bryson Shaw; Lejond Cavazos/Lathan Ransom/Ronnie Hickman; Ryan Watts/Martinez/Jantzen Dunn; Denzel Burke/Martinez/Dunn; Cavazos/Martinez/Shaw; Johnson/Martinez/Craig Young; Watts/Martinez/Young; Burke/Ransom/Young; Burke/Martinez/Ryan Batsch.
- There was no sign of new cornerback Demario McCall, though I could’ve just missed him. There’s a lot going on during these things.
- Young lined up exclusively at safety in what we saw of practice. He was getting some coaching during the triangle drill after he missed a rotation.
- Young is huge. He was easily the biggest member of the defensive backfield.
- Linebacker Mitchell Melton was on crutches and in a walking boot.
- Harrison impressed during individual wideout drills. He looks every bit of his reported 6-4 and showed off some impressive verticality on a couple of snags.
- During what could loosely be described as a scrimmage, a few things stood out:
- Ohio State showed a lot a two-high safety looks.
- Dunn made a great play from that safety spot, flying in out of nowhere to break up a McCord pass to Ruckert while creating quite the collision in the process, though everybody looked to be okay.
- Johnson had an interception off of a tipped pass from McCord.
