One to keep an eye on.

Committing tomorrow @ 1‼️‼️

— Bryce Ramer (@Bryce_Ramer1) December 7, 2017

Another one to watch

Decision Time 😌⏱

— Jerome Buckner II (@Jr_Buck) December 15, 2017

Only missing Gregory and Burks. Since Burks is a JUCO, he may have already signed.

It looks like we got a nice surprise in the form of Cole Baker. At 6'3", 275 with a 4.78, he should be able to play any position along the line right away. I believe his team won the National Championship.
https://www.hudl.com/profile/2587873/cole-baker
https://twitter.com/colebaker52?lang=en

They've been recruiting Baker for awhile. He visited back in November. If they need a CB, they have a month or so to find one for the February signing period.

We need a corner and a wide receiver, the two wideouts we have are probably going to redshirt.

Per Rankbyoffers, on a per player basis, the rank for various MAC teams in 2018 so far is:
WMU 261.95
Toledo 253.56
BG 130.37
Miami 119.86
CMU 98.35
NIU 91.02
Ohio 80.13
Ball St 63.32
EMU 62.37
Akron 61.49
Kent 47.83
Buffalo 43.13

Avg for MAC West is 138, for the East is 80.

All three of OUr walk ons look like they can play.

From a position standpoint we have a TE....a WR...and the above mentioned Dugan who looks like he could DE or linebacker.

The regular signing day is less than a week away--but will we actually have anyone other than Jerome Buckner to sign? We have 19 graduating seniors + probably Mayne Williams health giving us 20 open slots. We have 19 signees + Buckner as a commit.

So are we done? Most of the recruiting gossip I've seen on twitter is about the 2019 recruiting class.

WR Tyler Walton of St.Louis would be the cherry on top of an excellent class.

As I often point out, the recruiting rankings are meaningless down in the 2-star range. Nevertheless, I'd be remiss if I didn't point out that this class is the lowest ranked class, using 247Sports Composite ratings, going back as far as they computed it retroactively:

2003 113 (12th in MAC)<===was better than that, as seen in 2006-7
2004 92 (5th in MAC) <===was not that good, see 2007-8
2005 102 (9th in MAC)
2006 101 (9th in MAC)
2007 109 (9th in MAC)
2008 88 (2d in MAC) <====really was a good class, as seen in 2011-12
2009 103 (9th in MAC)
2010 112 (12th in MAC) <====really was an awful class, see 2013-14
2011 96 (6th in MAC) <=====was not that good, see 2014-15
2012 93 (5th in MAC)
2013 117 (10th in MAC)
2014 102 (6th in MAC)
2015 92 (5th in MAC)
2016 115 (8th in MAC)
2017 103 (8th in MAC)
2018 122 (10th in MAC)

RankbyOffers doesn't rate the players. Instead they figure that coaches who make offers have more on the line in rating players than self-proclaimed recruiting gurus, so they rate recruiting solely based on how many offers a player has. Here's how they rate the last few years:

2013 101
2014 89
2015 78
2016 119
2017 94
2018 114

Edit - I updated the class ranking for 2018, and added a few comments related to prior classes. I don't think this is the best class ever, but I don't think it's the worst one, either. Ohio's classes tend to be ranked about 6th-9th in the MAC, and that has been good enough to challenge for the MAC title, but not to win one. I'd like to see Ohio land a class in the top 3 again the next few years.

Edit2 - Class ranks seem to be final now. Ohio slid another notch in both rankings. I continue to agree that this class was not as good as those from 2014-2017. Remember that the primary impact of a recruiting class comes 3-4 years after that class. Thus, we'll know for sure how this class was come 2021-2.

Signing Day Press Conference

I did not realize they were having this LOI event this year. I did not receive notification of it, like I have in the past. I just assumed that since it was so anti-climatic this year that they had decided not to have the event.