On July 6, Eleven Warriors took stock of Ohio State’s 2027 class at every offensive position and reached the tight ends with almost nothing to report. No commits. No official visitors, not one, all summer. Dan Hope’s summary of the position was blunt: as things stood, three-star Tennessee prospect Colton Johnson was the only uncommitted tight end who held an Ohio State offer.
Three days later, Johnson committed to Ole Miss.
The pledge came Thursday, July 9. Johnson, a 6-foot-4 tight end from Upperman High School in Cookeville, Tennessee, chose the Rebels over Alabama, Florida State, North Carolina and Purdue, per On3’s Chad Simmons. Ohio State is not on that list. The Tennessean, reporting the commitment the same day, does name the Buckeyes among the programs that came after him when his junior film got out, alongside Tennessee, Alabama, Indiana and Oregon.
So this is not a near miss. Ohio State offered, and the recruitment moved on without them.
How the position emptied
The tight end room in this class was not lost in a day. It was lost in three separate moments, and only the last one arrived with a name attached to Ohio State.
Brock Williams was the priority, and had been since last fall. He went to Texas after Ohio State declined to meet his NIL terms, per Eleven Warriors. Sean Currie was booked into Columbus for the first official visit weekend at the end of May and committed to Penn State before he ever made the trip. Ohio State did not schedule another official visit at the position with anyone else.
That left Johnson, who was less a plan than a leftover. And now he is an Ole Miss commit.
What it actually changes
Very little on the field, and quite a lot on the board. Our 2027 needs page computes each position group straight from the commit board, and tight end has been reading STILL OPEN for as long as the page has existed: zero commits, zero targets. What has changed is that the emptiness now has a reason printed under it. Until Thursday, the position was a hole with somebody theoretically in front of it. Now it is a hole.
Ohio State has nine offensive pledges in the class and six of them are offensive linemen. There is no running back, which is what makes the David Gabriel Georges decision on July 22 the biggest date left on the calendar. And there is no tight end, which is what makes this week quietly worse than it looks.
The staff’s own history is the case for calm. Keenan Bailey has done late-cycle tight end recruiting before, and Eleven Warriors reports the hope is a repeat of the Nick Lautar recruitment from last cycle, when the answer arrived in the fall rather than the summer. New names will emerge. They usually do.
But they have to emerge, and that is not the same as being recruited. For now, the class of 2027 has no tight end committed, no tight end on the board, and no tight end who took an official visit. Three ways of describing the same empty room.
