Trojans’ Curry jumps into national recruiting spotlight

Earlier this spring, members of Ohio State’s football coaching staff paid Center Grove coach Eric Moore a visit to talk about prospective recruits, including rising junior defensive lineman Caden Curry.

The Buckeyes have had some success pulling from the Trojans in the past — Joel Hale was a valuable two-way lineman at OSU from 2011-15 — but they were wowed by what they saw from Curry, who was the Daily Journal and Metropolitan Interscholastic Conference Defensive Player of the Year this past fall as a sophomore.

Former Ohio State defensive studs Joey Bosa, Nick Bosa and Chase Young have all been top-three overall picks in the NFL draft over the past five years — and their coaches told Moore that Curry compares favorably with those players at the same stage.

"Pretty much, he can go anywhere he wants in the country," Moore said. "If they haven’t called, I could call them and they would look at tape and they’d offer him. If Ohio State tells you his high school film was better than the Bosa brothers and Chase Young, he’s on his way.

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"I’ve never heard them talk to me about a guy like that before. And they told me a couple of things that they saw he was doing wrong, and it’s only because he’s only played there six months at that position. Then they really freaked out when they heard that he hadn’t even played there before."

Curry had a monster season as a sophomore, leading the Class 6A state runner-up Trojans with 100 tackles, 26.5 stops for loss and 10.5 sacks. His 2019 highlight reel was impressive enough to put Curry on the national recruiting radar for 2022, even though he wasn’t able to make it to the U.S. Army National Combine in San Antonio over the winter and the COVID-19 pandemic took away any other opportunities to work out in front of college coaches this spring.

When 247Sports.com put out its early list of the top 247 prospects in the 2022 class, Curry was on it as the top-rated player in Indiana — an opinion that seems to be the consensus among analysts early on.

Tom Lemming, who has been scouting high school football players since John Elway and Dan Marino were being recruited in the late 1970s and pioneered an industry that college football fans now follow nearly as closely as the on-field product itself, came to Center Grove late this winter to interview Curry for his annual Prep Football Report and came away just as impressed as Ohio State’s coaches were.

"I really liked him," Lemming said. "He’s a very versatile ball player — tight end, long snapper, defensive end, defensive tackle. He’s got some length, he’s got that great first step, really quick off the ball, fast hands, and he attacks the ball on every down. He’s relentless; I like his style of play.

"We’ll be talking about him all year on the show when we get to the 2022 guys."

With scholarship offers already in pocket from almost half of the Big Ten (Indiana, Iowa, Michigan State, Minnesota, Ohio State and Purdue) as well as major-conference schools such as Arizona State, Boston College, Kansas State, Missouri and West Virginia, Curry figures to have just about every college in the country courting him before his junior season even begins. But the 6-foot-5, 250-pounder has the recruiting process on the back burner for now, especially with COVID-19 making it impossible to take any campus visits. He’s more concerned with the upcoming season, which is expected to begin with Center Grove as the top-ranked team in the state.

He’s been doing what he can to stay in shape with schools shut down, whether that’s running up nearby hills, lifting weights at a friend’s house or just finding a small area to drop down and do some push-ups.

"(Recruiting is) definitely something that’s going to get pushed back a lot," Curry said, "so I’ve just got to keep my head on and keep getting better as a teammate and a player right now, and then once it all opens up and I can go and do all these camps and stuff, I’ll be better than everybody because I’ll have been working harder."

At the end of last season, Curry had talked about wanting to beef up to 270 or 280 pounds for his junior season. But while Lemming and others agree that Curry may eventually get that big at the next level, the Trojan star has decided it’s in his best interest not to force that added bulk onto his body yet, since his speed and explosiveness are what have been catching the eyes of college coaches.

If the weight goes up naturally, so be it.

"They (OSU) want him like he is, man," Moore said. "They want him fast. … They want fast kids. They’ve set themselves up a lot like Miami of the ’80s, and that’s why things are so good right now. That’s exactly what their guys look like."

"After talking to these colleges, they definitely like how fast I play and how relentless I play," Curry added, "so I need to stay at my weight if I’m playing as fast as I can and they like it. But if I can get bigger and keep moving as quick as I am, I think they’d like that too."

With summer approaching and teams potentially getting the green light to start working out together on July 1, Curry is laser focused on getting ready for what he hopes will be a special 2020 season for the Trojans. Plenty of uncertainty remains, and a lot can change between now and then, but while some have expressed concerns at times that the pandemic could threaten to shorten or eliminate the fall sports season, Curry and his teammates are trying to ignore any such bad vibes.

"We don’t really like to talk about it, because it kind of hurts your feelings a little bit," he said. "We all just try to keep a clean mind right now and keep working to get better as a team."

If football does get played this fall and Curry can put up another season like the one he turned in last year, Lemming foresees him potentially becoming a consensus five-star recruit, which would make him one of the top two dozen or so prospects in the country. The fact that he’s already proven it for two years in the MIC, one of the nation’s toughest high school conferences, means colleges don’t have to gaze into a crystal ball and guess about what he might become. The evidence is there.

"He’s not only projected to be a real good player," Lemming said. "He already is."