Ohio State’s Glenville pipeline has another name to watch, and Cincere Johnson just crossed an important early milestone.
The Buckeyes linebacker has lost his black stripe, the program’s way of signaling that a newcomer has earned the right to be called a Buckeye. For Johnson, it’s another step in a path that Ohio State hopes looks a lot like the one Arvell Reese just traveled.
Reese, another former Glenville standout, is gone after three seasons in Columbus. He only needed one year in a starting role to turn himself into a player who could wind up as the first non-quarterback taken in the 2026 NFL Draft. Johnson is trying to follow that same lane, and the expectation around him is already unusually high.
That expectation comes with a real question attached: how fast can he turn the pedigree into production?
His season opened slowly because an injury in fall camp limited his availability, but he’s healthy now, and Ohio State finally got a look at him in Week 3 against Kent State. Johnson played 19 snaps in that game and finished with three tackles, a small sample, but one that offered a first glimpse of what he can bring.
Ohio State’s 2026 defense was built around Reese and Sonny Styles as two athletic difference-makers at linebacker, and both are now gone. Still, James Laurinaitis has assembled a room that doesn’t look like it’s going to collapse without them. The talent base is there, thanks to years of strong recruiting, and Johnson fits right into that picture.
He arrived as a five-star recruit, and now he’s taken the first step toward turning five-star talent into five-star production.
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His latest eruption only sharpened that feeling, even before the stat sheet fully settled in. Smith put together a performance that pushed his season ceiling in a major way and had the Buckeyes thinking bigger about what his role can become as the schedule grows tougher, with his recent production now setting a bar that will be hard to miss for the rest of the fall. [Read more 🡒]