The Ohio State football team will take the field this year with five fewer defensive linemen with starting experience than they had a year ago.
Gone are defensive ends Tyquan Lewis, Jalyn Holmes, and Sam Hubbard, as well as defensive tackles Tracy Sprinkle and Mike Hill. The first four of those names were captains for the Buckeyes in 2017.
Some of what Ohio State will be missing this season will be intangible, but the rest could certainly be deemed tangible. The Buckeyes have lost 46 career sacks from the departed defensive linemen, but please don’t weep for the Ohio State football program.
The OSU defensive line has been bolstered over the last few years by outstanding recruiting, but the foundation will be laid by four guys who all came in together in the 2015 recruiting class.
Robert Landers, Dre’Mont Jones, Davon Hamilton, and Jashon Cornell all redshirted as true freshmen, and have seen a differing range of playing time in their respective careers. Jones enters his third season as a starter, while Landers likely begins his first. Hamilton will be much more involved in the rotation at nose tackle with Landers this year, and Cornell’s move to defensive end indicates that he will play more than he ever has before.
The four of them leading the way is one reason why Robert Landers feels pretty good about the Buckeyes’ front four this season.
“We all complement each other all the way across the board,” he said. “With us, it really helps that we came in together, we’ve been here together for the past four years, and we’ve been able to not only build a bond on the field and a connection on the field, but off of the field as well.
“It really does help, but at the end of the day with us, we’re going to play football, we’re going to enjoy what we’re doing together and just try to do the best we can with leading this group.”
Their differences also help them complement each other. Jones is the prototypical three-technique defensive tackle. He can rush the passer from the inside, but also isn’t a pushover against the run. Landers is an unusual nose tackle given his 6-foot-1 and 283-pound frame, but his quickness and leverage make him a pain for interior linemen to deal with. Hamilton has shown similar flashes throughout his career, but at 6-foot-4 and 310 pounds, he is quite different to deal with. Then you have Cornell, who came in as a defensive end, and then became a penetrating defensive tackle. Injuries have held him back, but he is healthy now and as hungry as anybody on the team.
Then you add in defensive ends Nick Bosa, Jonathon Cooper, and Chase Young, with young defensive tackles like Haskell Garrett, Antwuan Jackson, Malik Barrow, Tommy Togiai, and others, and you get an idea of why Landers is so excited about the possibilities.
“It’s still really early, but we’re fast, we’re athletic, we’re young, we’re agile, we go hard, we’re tough,” he said. “We’ve got very big shoes to fill. The goal is always to enhance and make the goals from last year 10 times better going into the following year, so we’ve got a lot of work to do, but we’re a lot further along than we would have expected.”