CARTER COULD BE IN PLAY FOLLOWING HANCOCK DECOMMITMENT
North Gwinnett (Ga.) High School teammates Jordan Hancock and Barrett Carter have been dreaming of playing together at the collegiate level for years, and they appeared to be headed that way following their commitments to Clemson in March and May, respectively.
Now that Hancock, who has long been the Buckeyes’ top cornerback target on their board, has decommitted from the Tigers, his high school teammate could be back on the board and with it would put Ohio State’s top 2021 linebacker target back on the market.
That’s not me reporting that Carter is on the verge of a decommitment. Just that there is some optimism stemming from some of the Buckeye commits that Carter could wind up in play again, so we will have to leave it at that for the time being unless we dig up some more concrete information.
As we have discussed plenty of times before in this space, even if the Buckeyes don’t land a linebacker in this cycle, it’s not necessarily a problem. Defensive back has always been a major need in the 2021 class, but getting a linebacker such as Carter or LSU commit Raesjon Davis, who we’ve reported plans to make an official visit to Columbus with his family in the fall, would be a major luxury.
They have plenty of depth at linebacker going forward, and linebacker is on the bottom row in the hierarchy of positional needs in this cycle, especially with the firm commitment of the nation’s No. 2 inside linebacker, Reid Carrico, to hold down the Mike linebacker spot. That won’t be the case in the 2022 class, with at least three or four linebackers being the target goal and a handful of talented players available – including commit C.J. Hicks at OLB/bullet, Gabe Powers at Sam linebacker/defensive end, Dasan McCullough at Sam linebacker and Justin Medlock at Will/Mike linebacker.
