Lathan Ransom announces return for final season at Ohio State

COLUMBUS — “Unfinished business” is the Instagram caption Lathan Ransom used to announce his return to Ohio State for 2024, what will be his fifth and final season with the program.

“It’s not easy to leave a team. It’s much harder to leave a Brotherhood,” Ransom wrote. This football program and this university mean too much to me, and we have unfinished business.

“After much thought and prayer, I have decided to return to The Ohio State University for my final season in 2024.”

Ransom joins defensive tackle Tyleik Williams as the first two draft-eligible Buckeyes who have announced their decisions to return to Ohio State for next season.

Ransom missed the last five games of the season with a lower-leg injury that he suffered Week 9 at Wisconsin.

He hopped off to the sideline after a 1st-and-10 Wisconsin incompletion at the beginning of the fourth quarter. Ransom helped cornerback Denzel Burke cover Badgers wide receiver Bryson Green near the boundary prior to pursuing quarterback Braedyn Locke.

Locke threw the ball incomplete before Ransom got anywhere close to him. In the process, however, Ransom pulled up with his apparent non-contact injury.

The senior was taken to the locker room by wheelchair and cart. He did, notably, return to the field on his own power later in the fourth quarter, except he didn’t play the rest of the game — or the rest of the season.

Ransom has been a mainstay in the Buckeyes’ starting lineup the last two seasons, remarkably playing 614 defensive snaps in 2022 and emerging as a semifinalist for the Jim Thorpe Award — given annually to the best defensive back in college football — after recovering from a broken leg that he suffered on kickoff coverage during the previous year’s Rose Bowl. He’s also a proven special teams playmaker, even blocking punts in back-to-back weeks last season, the second of which he accomplished with a broken thumb.

This year, Ransom was fourth on the team with 34 total tackles at the time of his injury. He had shaved his missed tackle rate a smidge, bringing that percentage down to 15.6%, according to Pro Football Focus, and he had allowed just six catches for a mere 47 yards on 16 targets, per PFF.

Ransom forced a fumble against Western Kentucky. He teamed up with fellow safety Sonny Styles to make a key 4th-and-1 stop at Notre Dame, where he recorded a career-high 13 total tackles and earned Big Ten Defensive Player of the Week. And he intercepted Maryland quarterback Taulia Tagovailoa two weeks later.

“Lathan’s been much improved,” Ohio State defensive coordinator Jim Knowles said ahead of the Buckeyes’ Week 10 trip to Rutgers. “Any issues he’s had in the past — call it eye discipline, just like seeing too much — he’s really started to like, I call it ‘see a little to see a lot.’”

Knowles continued: “A lot of times at that safety position, you have to see just this (Knowles put his hands together making a small window) because that right there will tell you everything else that’s going on.

“So yeah, he had really been improved.”

Starting in Week 10 against Rutgers, Styles replaced Ransom as Ohio State’s starting strong safety. Styles began the season starting at “nickel” safety, but cornerback Jordan Hancock eventually became the Buckeyes’ go-to guy in the slot.

Ransom, originally the No. 9 safety in the 2020 class from Salpointe Catholic in Tucson, Arizona, was once again eligible to declare for the NFL Draft this offseason, but he’s not ready to do so.

Instead, he’s coming back for “unfinished business.”