EAST LANSING, MI - SEPTEMBER 29: Head coach Urban Meyer of the Ohio State Buckeyes reacts on the sideline while playing the Michigan State Spartans at Spartan Stadium on September 29, 2012 in East Lansing, Michigan. Ohio State won the game 17-16. (Photo by Gregory Shamus/Getty Images)

Why did so many players committed to the 2018 Ohio State recruiting class drop in the latest ESPN rankings?

The new ESPN recruiting rankings came out on Thursday morning. It was interesting to see just how many players committed to the 2018 Ohio State recruiting class moved down in the rankings.

There is always an ebb and flow to recruiting rankings. You might expect about half of a 14 player class to move up a few spots and the others to move down some when the new rankings come out. In this case, 10 of the 13 ranked commits to the Ohio State class moved down, and running back Master Teague still hasn’t cracked the ESPN300.

This could be easily explained if Ohio State wasn’t well represented at the prestigious Nike camp ‘The Opening’, or if the players who were there didn’t perform well. However, eight Buckeye commits were invited and most of them apparently had fine camps.

I want to credit Andrew Lind of Eleven Warriors for pointing out the downward trend in the rankings of some of the players committed to the ‘18 class. He also listed the players’ rankings along with their movement in his article that came out on Thursday. Here they are, beginning with the players invited to The Opening.

Brenton Cox DE No. 12 (+6)

Taron Vincent DT No. 13 (-1)

Jaiden Woodbey S No. 65 (-4)

Jaelen Gill Ath No. 36 (-1)

Teradja Mitchell ILB No. 42 (-2)

Josh Proctor S No. 167 (-1)

Sevyn Banks C No. 95 (+5)

Andrew Chatfield DE No. 158 (-18)

During the Nike camp, I continued to hear about good performances by seven of the eight players participating, most notably Cox, Banks, Gill, Vincent and Woodbey. So why did ESPN lower the recruiting rankings of six of the eight participants?

In fairness, Andrew Chatfield’s drop in the rankings may have been justified. He evidently didn’t shine on the big stage. Mr. Lind followed the Buckeye commits at The Opening and here is what he had to report about Chatfield in his article after he talked about Cox’s dominant performance:

Chatfield, meanwhile, struggled against bigger offensive lineman because, as I mentioned in my notebook from The Opening, he’s a bit lankier than most expected. He’ll obviously fill out once he hits a college weight room, but he wasn’t as physically imposing as some of the other defensive ends in attendance.

Here are the other players in the 2018 Ohio State recruiting class listed in the new ESPN rankings:

Matthew Jones OT No. 19 (-)

Emory Jones QB No. 23 (-1)

Max Wray OT No. 74 (-4)

Brian Snead RB No. 171 (-1)

Dallas Gant ILB No. 229 (-2)

As I mentioned previously, Master Teague is unranked by ESPN. Only 247Sports has the running back highly ranked among the big four, which also includes the Scout and Rivals recruiting services.

Well there you have it, the new rankings of players committed to the 2018 recruiting class according to ESPN. Make of it what you will.

In any event, the Buckeyes have an outstanding recruiting class and is still on pace to break the overall player average record in the 247Sports Composite.

Rankings differ among recruiting services and that’s why I prefer to use the 247Sports Composite in my articles most of the time. It is a compilation of the above mentioned services where the rankings of each of the four carry equal weight. That tends to even out things as each can have far differing views on a particular player’s talent.