Former Michigan lean now trending towards Ohio State

Miss out on any of the latest Ohio State recruiting tidbits while enjoying the weekend? No worries! As usual, Land-Grant Holy Land has your back for all things involving the never-ending news cycle that is Buckeye recruiting.

Crystal Balls for Brown

Not too long ago, four-star wide receiver Kaleb Brown was viewed as a heavy Michigan lean. The Chicago native received a handful of Crystal Ball predictions to the Wolverines prior to and during the 2020 college football season. Now, I don't know if you saw much UM football during the 2020 college football season, but it certainly was not pretty — and it didn’t exactly look like a place where a top offensive prospect would want to go waste his talents for a few years.

Compile that with questions surrounding the longevity of Jim Harbaugh’s coaching career in Ann Arbor, and it isn’t all too surprising to see the tide start to change. Brown is the No. 6 WR in the 2022 class, and the No. 63 overall prospect in the 247Sports Composite. At 5-foot-11, 177 pounds, he is a bit undersized for a wideout, but makes up for with his track speed — he ran a 10.84 100M as a freshman — and his innate ability to get open. A player of his caliber, already seeing some early second round NFL Draft grades, probably wants to play for a school that has been putting on a show at wide receiver lately.

Enter: Ohio State.

The first big domino to fall came last Monday, when 247Sports director of recruiting Steve Wiltfong submitted his Crystal Ball prediction for Brown to the Buckeyes. Two days later, another Crystal Ball for OSU came in from national recruiting analyst Allen Trieu. Since then, Ohio State has received two more Crystal Balls for Brown, one from Tom Loy and the most recent coming on Sunday morning from Ohio State insider Bill Kurelic. All four of these predictions came with a confidence of six or higher (out of 10).

Ohio State has not been shy about searching for a third wide receiver to add to an already ridiculously stacked room. Brian Hartline has been one of if not the best recruiter in the country these past few years, and with Caleb Burton and Kyion Grayes already in the mix in 2022, Brown would make it just another cycle with an absolutely loaded wide receiver class for Hartline and the Buckeyes. I mean, why wouldn’t you want to add a dude that can do stuff like this?

As of right now, Brown’s only scheduled official visit is to Ohio State on June 7, but he is also expected to check out Michigan at some point. The Buckeyes are set to have a bombardment of talent flocking to Columbus this summer, but Brown should be a name to really be on the lookout for shortly after the first weekend in June. If this mutual interest between the two parties is serious — and every indicator says that it is — we could be looking at another BOOOOM in a few short weeks.