Our Honor Defend

Things have been hectic on my end, including a week of overtime and preparation for my mama to come visit me from Los Angeles¹.  To compensate, I provide a rare weekend post and continue with the third edition of this now 19-part series known as Better Know A Buckeye.  I continue chronologically in this sixth installment with the case of Taylor Graham.  Graham, from Wheaton, Illinois and son of former Buckeye quarterback and NFL mainstay Kent Graham, is the lone quarterback of the 2010 class and, worth noting, not the first option on Ohio State’s big board of quarterback recruits.  A stellar camp performance in June and Ohio State’s other options falling by the wayside resulted in a June 18th, 2009 scholarship offer that was accepted on June 23rd.  I discuss these circumstances below, later mentioning strengths and areas for improvement.  I conclude with miscellaneous things of minor importance, the image and the board as I usually do.

Height: 6’4
Weight: 211lbs
40: 4.9
High School: Wheaton North HS; Wheaton, IL

His Recruitment: Taylor Graham’s recruitment is inexorably connected to two other factors: Ohio State’s general approach to recruiting quarterbacks and Nick Montana.  Ohio State’s approach to recruiting quarterbacks became apparent to Buckeye fans during the recruitment of Terrelle Pryor when the coaching staff told Pryor’s high school coach that they would recruit Pryor, and only him for their 2008 class even if it meant not having a quarterback in the class.  That scenario worked out for the Buckeyes, but the 2010 installment of that with Nick Montana was not paying dividends.  Montana was given a similar signal by the coaching staff and expressed strong interest in Ohio State before surprising most analysts with a June 9, 2009 commitment to Steve Sarkisian’s upstart Washington Huskies program.

Intent on taking a quarterback in this class, the Buckeyes next focused on Andrew Hendrix.  The Moeller prep star received his offer a week before the end of May as, I’m guessing, the coaching staff started to realize that Nick Montana was likely not going to be theirs and that they should start exploring other options.  It was not too long before the coaching staff started to get that same feeling about Hendrix.  Considering programs like Tennessee and Virginia before the Ohio State offer, Hendrix was quickly drawn to Notre Dame when Charlie Weis offered just days after Ohio State.  Hendrix ultimately committed to Notre Dame on June 25th.  Entering June 2009, the coaching staff identified their next target: Taylor Graham.

The offer was still on the board for Andrew Hendrix when Ohio State began to court Taylor Graham.  Graham, the son of the aforementioned Kent Graham, did not lack motivation to hear out Ohio State’s coaches.  Graham was a Buckeye fan growing up.  Like Duron Carter (another Buckeye legacy), he was born at the hospital on Ohio State’s campus that is a mere walking distance from Ohio Stadium.  He was eager to listen, but was certainly not wanting for scholarship offers.  It was still fairly early in the process, but Graham already had offers from UCLA, Duke, Wisconsin, Arkansas, Michigan State² and Iowa.  He wanted to hit up as many summer camps as he could in order to raise his profile and get back into the swing of things after being sidelined with an injury to end his junior season of football.  An obvious destination was Ohio State for the weekend of June 13-14, a camp held immediately after similar football camps at UCLA and Michigan State that Graham attended.  The coaching staff, aware of the situation with Hendrix, liked what they saw.  They told him to call them back in a few days.  When he did (around June 18th), he was informed that he an offer from Ohio State.

Graham, suffice to say, was ecstatic.  A lot of it was fandom.  His father played for the Buckeyes, he was born at the hospital on campus, I’m about 90 percent certain that his mom was a student there as well (hence the hospital anecdote) and he and his father were no strangers to Ohio State sporting functions.  This naturally evoked a great excitement.

“I’m really excited about this offer. I’ve always been a Buckeye fan growing up and I was born at the Ohio State hospital. When the chance came up to go to camp, I figured I would go and even if I didn’t get offered, it would be a great time seeing everything again. … It was great being there and seeing the facilities,” he said. “I wasn’t sure I was what they were looking for, but as the day went on they showed a lot of interest in me, and things just worked out.”

The elephant in the room was the “third fiddle” status.  That is, he got his offer after the Buckeyes lucked out on Montana and seemed destined to lose out on Hendrix as well.  This has come back to bite Ohio State in the past.  If you recall the recruitment of Kenny Guiton, you may remember that this was a deciding factor in Austin Boucher and Chris Coyer deciding to stick with their MAC commitments.  This did not bother Graham.

“I know Ohio State has offered two other quarterbacks but that doesn’t bother me at all. Right now I’m just ecstatic with this offer. It’s still kind of hard to believe. After my injury last year I never expected any offers, so this is so unbelievable, and Ohio State is such a great opportunity for me. I couldn’t be happier to be honest.”

The benefit of hindsight is knowing that, while Graham said he wanted to evaluate his options at the time, it did not take long before he reached a decision.

His Commitment: Andrew Hendrix had not even committed to Notre Dame yet when, on June 23rd, Taylor Graham indirectly said he would be willing to be Ohio State’s quarterback in the 2010 class if Hendrix and Montana were not interested.  Graham gave Tressel the call and told him he would be the sixth commitment in the 2010 class.

I won’t belabor the reasons why, but you can imagine what he talked about when asked why he committed to Ohio State.  His father played there, but that was among the weakest motivators.  He liked the coaches, is a fan of the program and grew up with Ohio State enough to know that it was the standard by which he would compare his others.  They failed in comparsion.

Unlike the quarterback search in the past two classes (2008, 2009), this one did not extend into February or past signing day.  Ohio State had their quarterback in the class by the end of June.

Where He Excels: Being a “third option” may get fans to think we are settling for Graham when we really wanted Montana or Hendrix.  I will permit that I would’ve preferred Montana to be in this class, but I like Graham over Hendrix.  Consider the offer sheet.  No, they’re not offers from places like Florida, Alabama, LSU, USC, Texas and so on, but the quarterbacking credentials of UCLA (Neuheisel, Chow), Arkansas (the Petrinos), Duke (Cutcliffe) and the effective, efficient ways that Wisconsin and Iowa tend to use their quarterbacks speak volumes.

There are two things in particular I like about Graham.  First, he has the necessary frame to be a drop-back quarterback.  He is 6’4, allowing him to see over the top of defenses.  Further, he has the frame to add about 20-25lbs in bulk for the sake of durability.  He also has incredible velocity on his throws, the important part of the “arm strength” thing that makes JaMarcus Russell a titan of sport in the NFL.  The ability to throw across the field on your knees is overrated, but throwing a precise ball, on a rope, into a tight space as it gets tighter can drive defensive coordinators nuts.  It is in this regard that I think Taylor Graham shows that he is his father’s son.  Do not underestimate what type of first-hand instruction you can get with a father who, though mostly a journeyman in his professional career, hung around the league long enough to know what it’s supposed to look like.

I try not to make predictions about playing time regarding quarterbacks.  As I mentioned in the Kenny Guiton feature last year, cases like Stanley Jackson, Austin Moherman, Justin Zwick, Rob Schoenhoft and Antonio Henton are cautionary tales for such an endeavor.  But, should Taylor Graham emerge in the next few years as the best option to quarterback the Buckeyes, there is reason to believe it will be because he has actualized the wealth of potential he has to succeed at the position.  The ceiling is high.

Must Work On: The obvious question to ask about Taylor Graham is his history of injuries.  He lost most of his junior year to a broken ankle, which he described in this fashion:

“I was rolling out to my right and I threw the ball and there was a guy in my face,” he said. “So, I tried to step back from him and I stepped back with my left foot and he hit me and all the weight of his body and all the weight of my body came down on my foot. My foot was planted in the ground, so what happened was all the weight went down and my foot stayed flat on the ground. So, essentially, my toes came up to my shin while my foot was still on the ground. So, it was kind of a freak accident, one of those ugly ones that you see on tape.”

He bounced back and hit the camp circuit in large part to compensate for the lack of junior film. However, his senior season ended in a similar fashion: a PCL tear that he suffered early and reaggravated after missing a few games.  He will be full-go by time he enrolls at Ohio State in the next month or so, but you can already envision future limitations of Graham as a starting quarterback for the Buckeyes, should he earn that job down the road.  He is not the dual-threat quarterback that Smith was and Pryor, Guiton are.  The Buckeyes will be much more conventional in their offensive sets, giving the prima facie impression that they will be limited (that is: will be different) in what they will be able to execute against opposing defenses.

Still, Craig Krenzel was not running spread option sets that Pryor does now.  What Krenzel had, and what it seems certain Graham will lack, is an ability/athleticism to extend a broken play or make plays with his feet.  Graham was never the kind to be like Drew Brees or Ben Roethlisberger in this regard, but the limitation may be more apparent now.  This does not mean that we are boned if he ends up earning the starting job in the future, just that protecting Graham is a premium.  Every now and then, opposing defensive coordinators will dial up such a blitz package that the quarterback, if he diagnoses it, knows that there is not enough bodies on his side to pick up all the blitzers.  Thus, he has a “man” that he is responsible for beating.  He will have to use his arm and audible underneath stuff to do so.

Another minor, but still important, point to make is that I do not believe his offense ran any more than a play here and there under center.  Everything I see is pistol or shotgun snaps.  Consistent with the implications outlined above, I think he will need to work on some footwork.

Redshirt? Graham should be fully healed when he enrolls, but I struggle to think of a not-worst case scenario that has Graham playing as a true freshman.  Pryor is entrenched as the starter and the Buckeyes have two scholarship backups.  Justin Bieber Siems will probably give the Buckeyes a better option as an experienced walk-on than Graham will provide when he enters.  If he doesn’t end up entering 2011 as a redshirt freshman, it likely means something very bad happened in the 2010 season.

Highlights: Keep in mind that there is a not big sample of plays to be considered for a highlight reel given his injury history, but you can watch this.  You can use the jersey number to differentiate junior and senior film.  He wore #17 as a junior and #19 as a senior.

Miscellany:

• Ohio State has had some legacies recently (Duron Carter, Adam Griffin, Sam Longo come to mind), but I think Graham is the first of the bunch to have played high school football at the same high school as his old man.
• On that note, Wheaton North was the same high school Chuck Long attended.  If you’re a veteran Buckeye fan, that name probably brought back this pleasant memory.
• His story was picked up by ESPN Chicago for the signing day festivities.
• Similar Dispatch story (from November 26, 2009) can be read here.
• Alex, of 11W, interviewed Graham as part of his “Catching Up With” series.  Do read.
• He carries a 4.7 GPA (on a 5.0 scale) and scored a 27 on ACT.  ‘Atta boy.
• Losing the last two seasons to injury, Graham doesn’t have a lot of “pre-compiled stats” available.  I’ll go ahead and list them anyways.

* Vital Statistics: Graham, the son of former Notre Dame, OSU and NFL quarterback Kent Graham, had a rough junior and senior year as the quarterback at Wheaton North. He played in five games as a junior before breaking his ankle. As a junior, he threw for 950 yards and six touchdowns against one interception. He impressed the OSU coaches at their camp last summer, earning an offer. As a senior, he suffered a torn PCL in his knee and was limited to parts of five games. For the year, he threw for 430 yards and two touchdowns. He is expected to be full-go, though, when he arrives at OSU for summer quarter.

* Rankings: Graham is rated as the nation’s 97th-best quarterback by ESPN Scouts Inc. SuperPrep ranks him as the 52nd-best prospect in the Midwest and the 12^th-best prospect in Illinois.

I think Taylor Graham is now better known.

Let’s put him on the board too.

Class of 2010
Name	Position	Hometown	Better Known?	Name	Position	Hometown	Better Known?
Darryl Baldwin	DE	Solon, OH		James Louis	WR	Delray Beach, FL
Drew Basil	K	Chillicothe, OH		Scott McVey	LB	Cleveland, OH	05.03
Corey Brown 2010	ATH	Springfield, PA		JT Moore	DE	Youngstown, OH	02.15
Christian Bryant	DB	Cleveland, OH		Andrew Norwell	OL	Cincinnati, OH	03.29
David Durham	LB/DE	Charlotte, NC	04.12	Verlon Reed	ATH	Columbus, OH
Taylor Graham	QB	Wheaton, IL	05.08	Bradley Roby	DB	Suwanee, GA
Adam Griffin	ATH	Columbus, OH		Roderick Smith	RB	Fort Wayne, IN
Chad Hagan	LB/S	Canonsburg, PA		Jamel Turner	DE	Fork Union, VA	03.08
Johnathon Hankins	DT	Detroit, TSUN		Tyrone Williams	WR	Cleveland, OH
Carlos Hyde	RB	Naples, FL	06.29.09

1. Mother’s Day is tomorrow, so remember to treat your mother right.  Mr. T may not think kindly of you if you don’t. [↩]
2. He seemed to privilege Michigan State early into the process. [↩]