The Pittsburgh Steelers subscribe to the belief that you can never have too many quality edge rushers. They proved that on Saturday when they drafted Ohio State LB Jack Sawyer in the fourth round.
Sawyer certainly made some impact plays for the Buckeyes during his time in Columbus. But just who is he?
JBS Strong
If you’ve watched Jack Sawyer play for Ohio State over the last season-plus, you probably noticed the phrase “JBS Strong” written on his wrist tape. JBS stands for a young man who shared Sawyer’s name, Jack B Sawyer.
When Sawyer played at Pickerington High School in Ohio, JBS reached out because of their common name. Then JBS was diagnosed with Ewing sarcoma, a form of cancer, and battled the disease. Sawyer kept in contact with the younger JBS and started wearing “JBS Strong” on his wrist tape. Unfortunately, JBS passed away on Nov. 5, 2023.
“Someone who was really a big inspiration for me was a good friend of mine named Jack Sawyer,” Sawyer said in an ABC/ESPN video package aired after he was drafted by the Steelers. “He was from Mentor, Ohio. And he was battling a rare form of cancer. I was able to reach out to him, grow a connection with him that was really special, with him and his family.
“It was going into one of my games my junior year. I was just sitting in the locker room, and I was just thinking about Jack and about his fight. And I decided to put him on my arm with me, so I wrote ‘JBS Strong’ for him on my wrist tape. It’s something that I’ve continued to do since then, and I’ll continue to do it in the NFL, too. Just a way to say I’m thinking about him, and he’s out there on the field and competing every time I step out there.”
Answering The Call
It shouldn’t surprise that Jack Sawyer was a force to be reckoned with at Pickerington North High School. But during his junior year, he stepped in at quarterback after an injury forced the team’s hand. And Sawyer delivered on both sides of the ball. Per his Ohio State bio, Sawyer threw for 1,056 yards and nine touchdowns to help carry Pickerington North into the state playoffs.
Even while filling in at quarterback, Sawyer continued to be a game wrecker on the defensive side of the ball. He was named Ohio Capital Conference -Ohio Division Defensive Player of the Year with 37 tackles, 19 tackles for a loss, and 10.5 sacks.
He somehow found time to play basketball in high school, too, making the varsity team as a freshman.
A Family Of Athletes With Pittsburgh Ties
Both of Sawyer’s parents were athletes in their own right. His father, Lyle, played football at Findlay College in Ohio. His mother, Michelle, was a basketball star at Pickerington before playing college basketball at Bowling Green.
But it’s Michelle’s father who established a connection to Pittsburgh. Gary Shade played baseball at Ohio University and was selected by the Pirates in the third round of the 1971 secondary draft. He spent one year with the Niagara Falls Pirates (now the Jamestown Jammers) of the New York-Penn League, a Class A farm team of the Pirates. Ed Ott, who was with the Pittsburgh Pirates for the 1979 World Series championship team, also played for the Niagara Falls Pirates along with former Pirate (and Yogi Berra’s son) Dale Berra.
Only The Third HS Freshman To Be Offered A Scholarship By Urban Meyer
Sometimes, we hear of young high school players getting early scholarship offers. One coach who wasn’t known for that: former Ohio State head coach Urban Meyer. Yet when Sawyer visited Ohio State during a spring practice when he was only 15, Meyer did the unthinkable.
“He was like, ‘I usually don’t do this with freshmen this early. But we’re going to offer you a scholarship,'” Sawyer said in an interview with Cleveland.com in 2018. “It surprised me, too, because they usually don’t do this with, especially Columbus kids, this early because you know, most of them will commit on the spot or something like that.”
According to Cleveland.com, Meyer had only offered QB Danny Clark and OL Liam Eichenberg as high school freshmen before Sawyer.
Sawyer eventually committed to Ohio State, but he never played for Meyer. He instead played for coach Ryan Day.
Strip-Sacked His Former College Roommate In The CFP
When Sawyer first arrived at Ohio State, he roomed with a quarterback. No, not new Steelers QB Will Howard (selected in the sixth round) but Texas QB Quinn Ewers. The latter shortly transferred to Texas, which had nothing to do with Sawyer.
Sawyer and Ewers were reunited when Texas and Ohio State faced off in the 2024 College Football Playoff semifinals in January. And Sawyer got the better of his former roommate in a big way. He came around the edge and stripped the ball from Ewers’ hand before scooping the ball up and returning it 83 yards for a touchdown in the Buckeyes’ 28-14 win.
It was an incredibly pivotal moment for both the Buckeyes and Longhorns. It crushed Texas’s national championship hopes. And it pushed Ohio State into the title game, which it went on to win. But even in the aftermath of the high-stakes game, the former roommates were still friends.
“We was walking off, he said ‘Screw you’ and started laughing,” Sawyer said in a postgame interview with ESPN. “That’s my boy. Obviously, we were roommates when he was here. Got a lot of respect for him.”
