Urban Meyer is one of college football’s best recruiters, and he’s consistently signed up elite classes since (and before) arriving at Ohio State in 2011. The 2017 class could be Meyer’s best; it finished No. 2 on the 247Sports Composite, with a higher average player rating than No. 1 overall finisher Alabama. Meyer gets great players.
Taron Vincent could be the best defensive tackle Urban Meyer’s landed at Ohio State
The country’s No. 1 defensive tackle is one of the most explosive interior line prospects you’ll ever see.
Consistent with that, Ohio State has signed and developed some really good interior defensive linemen over the years. Some have been high four-star talents, like No. 4 overall DT Haskell Garrett in the class of 2017. But Ohio State’s defenses have more frequently been built around elite defensive ends, linebackers, and secondaries than tackles. No Ohio State DT has been so good as to become a unit’s focal point.
That could change in a few years, when five-star tackle Taron Vincent is coming of age. Vincent is the class of 2018’s No. 9 overall player and No. 1 DT, according to the 247Sports Composite. He plays at the football factory IMG Academy in Bradenton, Fla., and made his verbal pledge to the Buckeyes at the beginning of April. He is the son of longtime NFL cornerback and current league executive Troy Vincent.
Vincent is the continuing subject of recruitment by other teams, including national powers like Alabama and Florida State. Keeping him on board is undoubtedly one of Meyer’s highest recruiting priorities until the winter, because Vincent’s just about as good as a high school defensive tackle can get. He’s a game-changing talent, even in a program that signs five-star defensive prospects as regularly as Ohio State does.
What stands out most about Vincent is his explosion off the line of scrimmage. He’s listed at 6’2 and 285 pounds, but he moves like a freight train. In the video above, you can watch him give courtesy rides to offensive linemen who have no chance whatsoever to do anything about him. He looks like he could play outside linebacker if he wanted, even though he’s got classic three-technique defensive tackle size.
“I got a fast get-off,” he told SB Nation’s Bud Elliott this month. “Aggressive with my hands, and violent when I get after the ball.”
Vincent models his game after that of Ndamukong Suh, another do-everything tackle. He likes Suh’s “relentlessness to the ball” and his aggression on the field. Suh was an elite recruit in the class of 2005, when he committed to Nebraska. He probably got less buzz then than Vincent’s going to get leading up to his signing day.
