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Welcome back to Buckeye Talk.

I am Stephen Krexnick, and that is Andrew Gillis,

and we have reached the end of our spring season previews, I talk. I am Stephen Kreisnick, and that is Andrew Gillis, and we have reached the end of our season, our spring season previews, position group by position group. And today,

the podcast is entitled, How Do You Replace a Generational Safety? It's not going to be easy.

And I think, honestly, to get ahead of it, the problem is the answer is probably you don't. Like, you don't replace Caleb Downs and his totality and everything that he's able to do. And I think we can maybe start talking about the safety position, like the safety position, instead of the queen on the chessboard, as we would often say. Instead of the Jackson five. It's like, oh no, Michael Jackson's gone, How do you replace him? You don't. You just kind of hope he comes back every so often for the, you know, reunion shows. So then I think this is going to be a fun exercise. Seriously, though, because we're going to have to do this again in 12 months. With Jeremiah Smith, right? Where it's, oh, yeah, the wide receivers might still be really, really good,

but like, how do you replace Jeremiah Smith? You don't. You just kind of move forward and keep going. Like, this is the epitome of the idea of, like, you don't rebuild, you reload. So when we look at what they've done with this room, Stefan, I think, I don't know if I have any complaints about how Matt Guerreri has gone about building this room.

You lose Caleb Downs. You do lose Fahim Delane, which I think that might be a big loss. I think it's a notable loss because he's a top 100 recruit that we all thought in year two would have a chance to go win a job. That's not going to be true. I'm sure that at some point during the year, we're going be watching football games and might watch an LSU game and go, oh yeah, there's Mahim Delaan

out there started. I'm sure that at some point during the year, we're going to be watching football games and might watch an LSU game.

We go, oh, yeah, there's Fahim Delaan out there starting.

How good is he comparing him to what maybe Terry Moore and Earl Little and Camarri Bing and Deshaun Steward and Leroy Roker and Blaine Bradford and Simon Caldwell and Kayton Gephardt are doing at Ohio State?

I do think, I think in a

world where you're going to lose Caleb downs and you lost what might have been the most enticing

young piece from last year, I think between what they've brought in from a true freshman standpoint

and how they went about using the transfer portal, I don't think I have anxiety about

Ohio State safety room heading into the spring. Yeah, I agree. And this is probably where

what they got in the portal is the most proven too, right? Like, obviously, Terry Moore is

coming off an injury situation, but when he was healthy, he was an all-ACC-type guy. And Earl Little,

I know we talked about him a little bit yesterday in the corner's pod, but, you know, he relates a bit to the safety's pod, too, just because that's kind of where he played at Florida State more so. And he's a guy who played at a pretty high level in the ACC as well, right? So it's like you go up and down the roster of the guys that they brought in from the portal, and John Walker is a pretty proven guy, but it's like James Smith and Quay Rusaw, you got some questions. Dominic Kelly and Camp Calhoun, they might not even be starters, and maybe you got some questions. Kyle Parker, Devin McEwen, you know, Devin McEwen did it at a lower level. Kyle Parker wasn't necessarily a star at LSU, even though he was pretty good, right? So you go up and down and the roster of like, okay, we like this guy, this transfer here, this transfer here, but safety is kind of where they went and got some guys who were proven and have done it at a high level, right? I think Terry Moore, if he's healthy, you know, maybe last season would have been a contender for an All-American bit or something like that based on, you know, the way his career trajectory was going. So you pair that with what you got, you know, in recruiting and what you signed. You feel pretty good about what you got here just because the floor, I think, is pretty high on this room. And obviously the ceiling is is even higher so i i like

what they did at safety i mean macquarie's been you know pretty solid for ohio state since he got here

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