Hey, hey, where you been? But got to talk is about to begin. Hey, hey, hey, come on in.

Welcome back to Buckeye Talk. At least two thirds of it, Nathan Baird. That's me. Steven Means. Doug Lamarice is away today.

We'll be away, I think most of this week, but Steven and I will keep bringing you the reports from Ohio State preseason camp today was defensive line day.

We got Larry Johnson. We got eight of his pupils there in the defensive line room in tackles. We're going to talk a lot about what we heard from those guys.

First up, we have to talk about the other big news around the program today. We all woke up on Tuesday morning to the news of Evan priors likely season ending injury that he suffered in practice on Monday.

Obviously prior had been a highly anticipated player for this offense. And it's not because he was necessarily going to get up there as we talked about and challenge for big carries big targets, big share of the offense.

Nine Williams was pretty clearly established as the number two behind Trevor and Henderson. But people saw something there in Ohio State. Obviously saw something there as the former top 100 prospect.

A guy who you'll paid his dues last year with a red shirt showed some flashes in the spring game showed some things when he touched the ball last year had been doing things all off season to really build some momentum.

And then Monday the the practice the injury bug hits and he's going to miss the year. To me, this is a thing that affects Evan prior and where his career goes from here, which still is bright a bright future for him. Maybe being the guy in this room in a couple of years.

But it's a bigger loss for him immediately than it is for Ohio State's production and running back assuming assuming no other injuries crop up.

Yeah, this really sucks from him because he had really worked hard to physically get ready to play college football over the past year. And this was supposed to be his year where he was finally ready to contribute. So you feel sorry for him.

From a football standpoint, though, the reality is Ohio State lost his Thursday running back.

And they still have the top guy who might be one of the best running backs in the country, depending on how you feel about, you know, some guys and that tech Texas Wisconsin and whatnot and trade got Henderson and then my Williams has proven to be at bare minimum of very quality number two during his career here.

It's pretty much all played his recruiting ranking at this point. So you're still fine there.

As long as nobody gets hurt, which is I think the way we're talking about the cornerbacks, the way we're talking about tackle.

Where it's like there's a lot of positions where it's like man, the upside is high as long as the guys who have the upside don't get hurt.

And that we've heard some good things about downhated as well, you know, he's only been here for two months, but that's three scholarship running backs, which is a very stark difference in where you were a year ago when I think they have like six.

And we were asked in Tony offer questions about man, how's it feel to have so many running backs that you feel confident in.

Yeah, numbers wise, this running back room has been bouncing up and down pretty dramatically the last few years, go back to 2020.

And where they were coming out of the spring when master T gets hurt early in the spring and master T gets hurt and people are like, what, where is this thing going?

And then you know, they figured it out got through got to national championship game. And then like you said, just an abundance of guys last year that had to kind of be whittled away, steal chambers moving the linebacker helped that.

And then now I'm not going to dismiss the depth concern because now you do have triven Henderson, one of the best in the country, mine Williams, a very productive backup guy.

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