Jake Hausmann Remains Pleased with Ohio State Decision, Journey
Cincinnati, Ohio native Jake Hausmann was considered one of the top-five tight ends in his football recruiting class after a standout career for powerhouse Archbishop Moeller. The now 6-foot-4, 255-pound senior had roughly two dozen offers and committed to Ohio State over competitors like Georgia, Notre Dame, Florida State, Arkansas, Ole Miss and Penn State.
Things maybe haven’t gone quite as Hausmann hoped they would in Columbus, however, at least in terms of playing time on the field. He redshirted during his initial 2016 campaign and was then buried on a depth chart the next year topped by Marcus Baugh, Rashod Berry and Luke Farrell.
Jeremy Ruckert also joined the mix and Hausmann has been working hard to compete for snaps throughout the years. He appeared in three games as a redshirt freshman, then played on special teams in the final 11 games of the 2018 season. Last fall, as a fourth-year junior, he was a starter on the punt unit and played in all but one contest for a Buckeye team that captured its third-straight Big Ten title.
“This is the place that was going to develop me the most, and that’s why I chose it (OSU) out of high school,” explained Hausmann, when asked about opportunities to maybe go elsewhere in recent years. “I’m glad, over the past year or two, that I’ve gotten to this role I’m in now. I’m happy with sticking around.”
Hausmann scored his first-career touchdown last year against Rutgers while continually developing in the classroom, too. The strategic communications major is a 2x Academic All-Big Ten honoree and has been named an OSU Scholar-Athlete four times. Hausmann even spent the summer of 2018 shadowing former tight end Jake Ballard, an engineer at the Howard Hanna Lenker Group in nearby Galena.
He is now back for one last go-around in a Buckeye uniform, likely third once again (at the moment, at least) on the positional depth chart. That doesn’t matter to any of the current tight ends, however, who know how experienced and capable they have become collectively.
“We are functioning so smoothly as a unit,” Farrell said when asked about Hausmann last week. “It doesn’t matter who’s in there, they’ll get the job done.”
The tight end position will certainly be a critical, and intriguing, aspect of the offense come October 24 against Nebraska and beyond this season. Stay tuned to BuckeyesNow and all of our social media outlets (@BuckeyesNowSI) on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube for continued coverage!
