Ohio State’s Jack Sawyer Says Legacy Is at Stake for Buckeyes’ Stars

INDIANAPOLIS — There are many ways to build a championship college football roster in 2024. On paper, the Ohio State Buckeyes aced all of them this offseason, with a major assist going to a group of veteran players led by defensive end Jack Sawyer.

The Buckeyes inked the No. 3 high school recruiting class in the country, per 247Sports, and added an impressive array of transfers including Athlon preseason All-Americans Caleb Downs and Quinshod Judkins, as well as Athlon All-Big Ten quarterback Will Howard.

The most impactful group, however, is the team’s group of returning upperclassmen, many of whom opted to delay their NFL careers for a year to try to return the Buckeyes to the mountaintop.

“There’s 12 guys who decided that they wanted to come back and play this year,” Ohio State coach Ryan Day said at Big Ten media days on Tuesday. “They wanted to forgo their opportunity to go to the NFL and come back and leave something behind at Ohio State. Since they made that decision … you can see the look in their eye, it’s a special group. It’s a fun group to be around every day.”

Among those 12 are the team’s trio of media day representatives: cornerback Denzel Burke, wide receiver Emeka Egbuka and Sawyer , whom Day credits with a serious recruiting effort to bring back so many of his veteran teammates.

“I just told those guys, like, ‘Look man, like, when we came to Ohio State, you know, we had all these goals and aspirations to achieve,’” Sawyer said. “And, you know, don’t get me wrong, I want to go to the NFL and chase my dream of that more than the next guy. But before we can chase that, we had something bigger at stake, something bigger than ourselves.

“Coach Day always talks about leaving your legacy at the Ohio State, becoming one of the best teams that ever come through here. And my conversations with them were if we all decided to come back for our senior year, imagine the things that we could achieve. There’s nothing we couldn’t achieve. … To me, that was my selling point to those guys.“

Sawyer’s primary goals are threefold : 1.) beat Michigan, 2.) win the Big Ten, and 3.) win the national championship. Ohio State has ranked among the best teams in the country since he joined the program as a five-star recruit from Columbus in 2021, but the Buckeyes haven’t accomplished any of those three things since. He admits those shortcomings have haunted him .

“It fuels us every day,” Sawyer said. “I haven’t won a championship. I haven’t beaten the team up north. You walk around the Woody [Hayes Athletic Center], and all you see is championship posters and banners. I’ve been here for three years and haven’t helped our team win one of those. It’s something that wears on me and something that motivates me every day.”

Those goals clearly motivate Day as well. As he enters his sixth season as head coach, he faces increasing pressure due to recent struggles against the Wolverines despite a 56-8 record as Buckeyes head coach.

“I think when you owe it to the guys that came back that these guys didn’t come back for no reason, they came back for a reason. And we owe that to them as coaches,” Day said. “We owe that to them as everybody else who is part of the program that are there to support them. Like, yeah, we’re thinking big, and these guys are thinking big, and we know what’s at stake, and we want to do everything we can to have them leave with a legacy behind and a bunch of hardware.”

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