Larry Johnson has rebuilt Ohio State's defensive line from scratch before. He is doing it again in 2026, and this time the portal did a lot of the heavy lifting.
The Buckeyes lost their entire starting front seven months ago, with Kayden McDonald and Caden Curry both selected in the NFL Draft alongside the linebacker group. Rather than lean entirely on an unproven group of returners, Ohio State went to the transfer portal and landed a package deal that instantly changed the math up front: former Alabama defensive linemen James Smith and Braylon Russaw, who entered the portal together and committed to the Buckeyes together after a visit to Columbus.
A Five-Star Package Deal
Smith arrives as the No. 7 overall transfer prospect and the top-ranked defensive line transfer in the country, a five-star recruit out of high school who started for Alabama but never fully lived up to that billing in Tuscaloosa. Russaw, ranked as the No. 10 edge transfer nationally, was also a five-star coming out of high school. Adding both in the same week gives Matt Patricia and Johnson two former blue-chip recruits with Power Four starting experience to plug directly into the middle of a rebuilt front.
UCF transfer John Walker rounds out the interior additions, giving Ohio State a third proven college player at a position that lost its most productive returner to the draft. None of these three are being brought in purely for depth. Each is expected to compete for real snaps from the moment fall camp opens.
Why the Interior Needed Help First
Of everything Ohio State lost this offseason, the interior defensive line took the hardest hit. McDonald was the anchor of a group that helped the Buckeyes finish first nationally in total defense, and there was no returning player with anywhere close to his snap count or production ready to simply step into that role. Johnson has said as much throughout the spring, and the coaching staff's approach mirrored what it did a year earlier when the entire starting line left at once: identify the specific need, then go get proven players rather than hoping development alone closes the gap in a single offseason.
That urgency also reflects how central the defensive line is to everything Patricia wants to do schematically. His pressure packages and stunts up front are what make the rest of the defense's coverage disguises work, which means a line that can't consistently generate pressure changes what the entire unit is capable of doing on early downs.
There is also real precedent for betting on Johnson's ability to make this work regardless of star ratings or recruiting pedigree. Across his tenure at Ohio State, Johnson has developed roughly 20 defensive linemen into NFL draft picks, a track record built on players who arrived as blue-chip prospects and players who arrived as afterthoughts alike. That history matters here because Smith's stalled development at Alabama is exactly the kind of reclamation project Johnson has succeeded with before, and it is a big part of why Ohio State felt comfortable making this specific bet in the portal rather than simply hoping an unproven underclassman would be ready to play significant snaps right away.
A Trench-First Roster Philosophy
Ohio State's approach to the defensive line this offseason also lines up with what the program has prioritized on the recruiting trail for the 2027 class, where Johnson and Patricia have already landed multiple elite defensive line prospects. Building depth through both the portal and high school recruiting at the same position gives the coaching staff options that a single-pipeline approach doesn't, and it reduces the risk of another single-class talent cliff like the one Ohio State just navigated with its 2025 group.
It is also a reminder that Patricia's system doesn't require a specific type of player to function. His fronts have always been built around whoever is available rather than forcing every lineman into an identical mold, which is part of why a transfer like Smith, who never found consistent playing time in a different scheme at Alabama, can realistically be expected to contribute right away in Columbus.
What Fall Camp Will Decide
Smith, Russaw, and Walker won't walk into a wide-open depth chart. Returning players still have every opportunity to win jobs, and Johnson's track record of developing whoever is in the room, blue-chip transfer or not, is part of why Ohio State's line production has stayed remarkably consistent even as the names on the roster change every year.
What matters most heading into the season is that the interior of this defense won't be relying on hope. It will be relying on three players who have already started meaningful college snaps somewhere else, learning a scheme that produced the best statistical defense in the country in Matt Patricia's first season running it. That is a much stronger starting point than most programs get after losing this much talent to the draft in back to back years.
