Scout..com reporting a verbal to Ohio.  Building a huge O-line early in the recruiting class.

Really liked watching Durrell block his opponents. He keeps driving until the whistle!!! Has good blocking form and he put's a lot of opponents on their back. Betting that our coaches will make an All MAC OT out of him. Really glad that he is choosing the BOBCATS. Hope we don't lose him.

I thought it would be useful for me to bump this stale thread from last year's recruiting class. Durrell is now starting on the Offensive line as a true Freshman, and is doing a very good job. Against CMU he racked up 7 pancakes, 2 knockdowns, and 9 decleaters. All three were highest on the team. His grade was 1.75/2.00, so there is still room for improvement, but for a true Freshman, this is very, very good performance. If he keeps improving, he'll be all-MAC someday for sure.

A 4-star, or 3-star recruit? No, he was unrated by ESPN, 2 stars by Scout, 2 stars/5.4 by Rivals, and a lowly 72 by 247Sports. His rating by 247 was one of the lowest ratings for any of Ohio's recruits, ahead of only the 70 ratings give to Cameron McLeod, Tarrell Basham, and Brendan Cope. Cope is redshirting, but McLeod is 17th on the team in tackles with 14 and 2 tackles for losses, a half sack, and a pass broken up. Basham is 18th in tackles with 12, but has 5 sacks (#2 in the MAC), a pass broken up, and a forced fumble.

I'm not pointing all this out to knock the recruiting services. Note that BA recruiting followers didn't make a lot of noise about Durrell, either. The point is that it isn't always easy  to know what you are getting, and that 2-stars or 3 stars or 4 stars, you may well be getting a good player. To me the key is this - He got his offer 5/23, and verballed on 7/9. The fact that he was one of the first batch of players offered tells me the coaches saw something they liked, and he was a priority to get. In this case, the coaches were right, and the recruiting services were wrong.

Without a doubt the coaches would not have burned the redshirt without the injuries. RG was supposed to be Johnson, followed by Lucas, but Johnson has been out since Louisville, and Lucas has played Center and Left Guard. He's going to be a heck of a player as a Senior, and one can only wonder how good he'd have been as a fifth year Senior.

As for finding hidden gems, that's why, for me, one of the best indicators of a good class is that the coaching staff is getting their first choices. I love all the early verbals the last couple years.