COLUMBUS, Ohio – While we have known for weeks about this addition the Buckeyes officially announced the addition of running back Trey Sermon to the team on Wednesday morning. The Marietta (Ga.) product spent the past three seasons at the University of Oklahoma and will be eligible for the Buckeyes in the fall (or whenever the 2020 season gets underway).
“He can do a lot of things,” Ohio State head coach Ryan Day said during a Wednesday teleconference with the media. “He is big, strong, powerful, got good feet in the hole, can break tackles, he can run routes out of the backfield, he can pass protect… he is another versatile guy that is strong, powerful and intelligent in just talking to him and understanding his football IQ. We are fired up that he is a Buckeye.”
Sermon played in 37 games for the Sooners over his three-year playing career in Norman (Okla.) and would celebrate his most successful season in 2018, a year where Sermon would rush for 947 yards on 164 carries and 13 touchdowns.
The ex-Oklahoma back would split time in the backfield with Kennedy Brooks and Sermon’s 2019 season would come to a sudden halt when he suffered a knee injury against Iowa State and would miss the remainder of the season after only 54 rushing attempts on the year. Sermon averaged 7.1 YPC on those limited carries.
Sermon will earn a human relations degree from Oklahoma before enrolling at Ohio State, where he will have one year of eligibility remaining.
Ohio State received nothing but glowing endorsements of what Sermon was all about from his former school. Of course, the Buckeyes saw first-hand in 2018 when the Sooners came to Columbus and toppled the Buckeyes in a game where Sermon found the end zone.
“The people at Oklahoma had such great things to say about him,” Day said. “We know, we played against him and we saw what he could do on the field. He is a really good player.”
When a player enters the transfer portal, it allows other schools to contact a player legally through the NCAA rules and that was no different in this case. What was different was the fact that the country really went into a no-contact period on any front and there were not the typical in-person meetings that you would expect in these types of situations. Ohio State certainly did do all its research in this process however in making sure this would be a good fit on both sides.
“It was hard because we don’t really have an opportunity to spend face-to-face time with him, but we did the best we could through teleconferencing… we got to build that relationship up,” Day said. “I have been very impressed with our conversations with him. I know our team is going to take him with welcome arms.”
He joins a backfield that has plenty of talent but may be short on healthy bodies at this time with both Master Teague and Marcus Crowley still on the mend. Ohio State only has one healthy scholarship running back currently with Steele Chambers.
“Master getting hurt here in the spring put us behind the 8-ball a little bit in terms of depth and then Marcus Crowley coming off the ACL (injury), so when Trey became available we did a lot of research and made a lot of calls,” Day said.
There is only so much that Ohio State was able to do to check on the status of Sermon after his injury and how his rehab is coming along but it certainly appears to be going well and was enough to satisfy the Buckeyes.
“We had to ask some questions about a lot of things,” Day said. “Everything came back really positive and we felt really good about this.”
The Buckeyes know a thing or two about transfers having been on both ends of some high-profile ones with a pair of players that are going to hear their names called in the upcoming NFL Draft. Granted, the one who got away may hear his name a little sooner.
“It is one of those things, now more than ever, this transfer thing is the way that college football is going,” Day said. “We obviously saw that last year with Jonah Jackson and Joe Burrow.”
Now there is the question of when the season will go off, will it go off as planned at the start of September, will it be pushed back a matter of weeks or into the spring? Will there be conference games only or a full schedule? A lot of questions that nobody has answers to at this point.
But when it comes to the question of where Trey Sermon is slated to play next season, we know the answer to that one and the Ohio State Buckeyes could not be any happier with their prized addition.
It already appears that the Ohio State running back room is taking to their newest addition, even if the running back room is only a figure of speech under these current circumstances.
"I am really impressed with our running back room and how they have already taken him in and that goes to show you the culture of our team," Day concluded.
