Caden Moss committed to Ohio State on Friday, June 26, 2026, on Instagram Live, after reaching the decision earlier that week. He picked the Buckeyes over Ole Miss, Kentucky, LSU, Oregon and Tennessee. He is a 6-foot-5, 320-pound offensive tackle from Jackson Academy in Jackson, Mississippi, he was the sixteenth commitment in this class and the sixth and last offensive lineman in it, and every outlet that covered the pledge led with the same idea: Ohio State had finally won one in the trenches away from home.
One line at the bottom of Eleven Warriors’ story is the more remarkable fact, and it does not appear in any of the other commitment stories collected at the foot of this page.
“He will be just the second player ever from the state of Mississippi to play for Ohio State,” Dan Hope wrote, “joining former Buckeye tight end Craig Robinson, who played just one season for Ohio State in 1990.”
The first one
Craig Robinson is not a mystery. His entry survives in the 1990 Ohio State media guide, reproduced by the roster archive BuckeyeRosters: tight end, 6-foot-3, 234 pounds, one roster year, and a hometown line that reads Jackson, Mississippi, Lanier High School.
The guide describes a high school career that sounds like a small town’s whole team. Robinson played defensive end, tight end, defensive tackle, linebacker, offensive guard, offensive tackle, running back and tailback. He caught 15 passes for 225 yards and four touchdowns and carried 15 times for 108 more. He was an all-state pick and a USA Today and Blue Chip All-American. He was a cousin of Danny Manning, and he came to Columbus intending to study computer science.
Then one season, and the roster moves on without him.
That is the entire history of Ohio State football in the state of Mississippi. One man, one year, thirty-six seasons ago, from Jackson. Moss went to high school in the same city, at a different school on the other side of it, and if he signs in December and plays he becomes the second name on that list.
Ohio State has not recruited offensive linemen like this in years, and three outlets measured it three different ways
The drought Moss ended is real, but the three outlets who reported it were not describing the same drought, and the differences matter more than the headline number.
Eleven Warriors measured commitments: for the first time since Donovan Jackson in the 2021 class, a top-100 overall offensive lineman who is not from Ohio committed to the Buckeyes.
The Columbus Dispatch measured signatures, which is a harder test. Joey Kaufman wrote that Ohio State has not signed a top-100 offensive lineman from outside Ohio since Jackson, who grew up in a suburb of Houston before enrolling in 2021.
Bucknuts measured blue chips at the position, and Garrick Hodge laid out the ladder in full: the last blue-chip out-of-state tackle Ohio State landed before Jimmy Kalis this spring was Ian Moore in the 2024 class, the last top-70 out-of-state tackle was Jackson in 2021, and Moss and Kalis together are the first pair of blue-chip out-of-state tackles in one Ohio State class since Jackson and Zen Michalski five years ago.
For Tyler Bowen, two years into the job, Eleven Warriors called Moss the biggest recruiting win of his tenure and the first out-of-state lineman he has landed at Ohio State ranked inside the top 300 of his class.
Nobody agrees on what he is
The services that rank Moss do not agree about his position, his ceiling, or how many stars belong beside his name.
His 247Sports player page, read on August 3, 2026, carries a 94 rating on 247’s own board: No. 69 nationally, No. 8 among offensive tackles, No. 2 in Mississippi. Those are the exact two numbers Bucknuts printed the night he committed, which means 247’s own evaluators have not moved him a single place in the five weeks since. The composite on the same page reads 0.9700, No. 75 nationally, No. 7 at the position. On the day he committed, Eleven Warriors and the Dispatch both had that composite at No. 72. The board on this site says No. 74, which is the July 7 figure. Three readings of one statistic, three weeks apart, drifting by three spots.
ESPN is not in that conversation at all. Eli Lederman’s story calls Moss a five-star, No. 15 in the SC Next 300 and the No. 4 offensive tackle in the 2027 cycle. One service’s seventh-best tackle is another’s fourth, and one of them gives him a fifth star.
Then there is the question of where he actually plays. Eleven Warriors reported that Moss is expected to play tackle for the Buckeyes but could also play guard. The scouting report on his 247Sports page, written by director of scouting Andrew Ivins and stamped Evaluated 01/03/2026, is blunter: “Certainly worth a look at the corner, but future might ultimately be on the interior where he can lean into defenders and clear space with his power.” Ivins notes that Moss added almost 80 pounds between his freshman and junior seasons and comps him to Micah Morris.
There is a tidy irony in that, and Bucknuts pointed at it without quite saying so. Donovan Jackson, the last out-of-state tackle of this caliber Ohio State signed, was listed as a tackle on his own recruiting profile, spent most of his career at guard, and moved out to tackle halfway through the 2024 national title season. The position on the profile has never been the point.
What Moss has actually done
He was the starting left tackle for a Jackson Academy team that went 11-1 in 2025 and won its first state title since 2011, and MaxPreps made him a Junior All-American for it. He played in both the Under Armour All-America Game and the Polynesian Bowl in 2026 as an underclassman. He averaged 5.6 points and 5.1 rebounds across 24 basketball games as a junior, and he threw the shot put 44 feet 1.25 inches as a tenth grader.
He told ESPN why he chose Columbus over five programs that were closer to home. “You’re going to be around very talented players at Ohio State, players that are going to bring out the best in you,” he said. “That’s a program where you’re going to have first-round draft picks every year. The development end is there for sure.”
Nothing is signed
Kaufman put the caveat in his own story, and it is the right note to end on. Keeping Moss in this class through December, when the early signing period opens, would itself be the notable feat. That is what the Dispatch’s yardstick is for: a commitment is a sentence a teenager says in June, and the reason the gap since Jackson is measured in signatures rather than pledges is that the two are not the same number.
Until then he is a verbal, No. 74 on this board, and the second name on a list of two.
