Healthy, more experienced Julian Fleming is ‘very motivated’ heading into sophomore season

There’s no sugarcoating it. Julian Fleming didn’t have the freshman year he hoped for at Ohio State.

Despite being the highest-ranked wide receiver ever to commit to the Buckeyes and the top-ranked wideout in the 2020 recruiting class, per the 247Sports Composite, Fleming never really got going in his debut college season, catching just seven passes for 74 yards. Reflecting back, however, it’s not difficult to see why.

Fleming had two things going against him upon arriving to Ohio State. The first was a lingering shoulder injury that hampered his ability to lift his arm. The second was an adjustment from a run-heavy high school offense to the Scarlet and Gray’s more balanced spread attack.

The shoulder issue was more of a physical concern and one many fans watching Fleming play likely weren’t aware of. The injury goes all the way back to eighth grade and something the receiver battled through throughout high school.

During his first season at Ohio State, Fleming wore a brace on his shoulder that kept him from causing further damage, but also made it hard to lift his arm very high. For a receiver trying to catch the ball, that was a problem.

“I don’t even really want to talk about that shoulder brace,” Fleming said with a slight laugh when asked about it last week. “Range of motion was about, it was probably like almost to my head. It couldn’t go anywhere above my shoulder. So it was kind of difficult to catch passes anywhere like from eye range to above. So it was a process and it was hard to get used to at first, but it was just the best thing for me to keep me healthy.”

In addition to playing through pain and dealing with his limited mobility, Fleming also had to adjust to the Buckeye offense in 2020. While the jump from high school to college is a big step for every young Scarlet and Gray player, Fleming’s Southern Columbia ran the Wing-T offense, which is a run-oriented, misdirection attack.

This meant that Fleming, despite his 183 catches and 3,942 yards in three years of high school football, was not used to the nature of Ohio State’s more pass-heavy attack.

“It was definitely very different from my high school,” Fleming explained. “We were in a Delaware Wing-T and now we’re calling in plays from the sidelines. So even learning signals and just learning how to properly do top ends and be really detailed on routes and stuff, it was a big jump.”

While he was the top-rated receiver in the 2020 class, Fleming largely got by on his athleticism in high school. He was generally bigger, faster and could jump higher than the defensive backs covering him which meant that, when Southern Columbia decided to throw, Fleming could make nearly any catch.

When he arrived in Columbus, Fleming had to learn how to be a receiver in the Buckeye offense, which he admits was a bit of an eye-opening situation.

“I feel like it was a little bit of a rude awakening,” Fleming said. “But at the same time, I kind of knew it was coming. Just because everybody told me college was not high school, and obviously it’s not. So I came in with just, I’m ready to work and a positive mindset.”

What should have been an offseason of learning how to run routes at the college level, set up defensive backs, learn landmarks on the field and more skills for Fleming instead turned into a lot of film work from his home. Like his teammates, Fleming was negatively affected by the COVID-19 pandemic which forced Ohio State into one of the strangest offseasons in program history.

“Winter workouts were all good but once we started and we had I think a couple of spring practices, it was a little bit frustrating,” Fleming remembered of the time before COVID ended spring practices. “Just learning to get the footwork, all the smaller details that everybody else had known already. And I was kind of working in how to get better at top ends and coming in and out of breaks and stuff like that.”

This, along with the ongoing shoulder injury, helps explain why Fleming had less than five percent of the Scarlet and Gray’s receptions as a freshman, despite being such a highly regarded prospect coming out of high school.

Now over a year into the program, things are certainly looking up for Fleming. He had surgery on his shoulder this offseason, which means he’s no longer wearing the brace, has returned his arm to a normal range of motion and he spent the last several months perfecting his game as a receiver.

“The best way that even some of my coaches put it here and the way that I put it is I feel like I came in as just a raw athlete,” he said. “And at this point, I feel like I’m transitioning into the wide receiver and not just the athlete whose God-given talents put them above people.

“Now just being able to have full range of motion all the way above my head, extending out all the way and not having to keep me stuck inside, it’s a wonderful feeling and it hasn’t been like this in a while. So I’m just excited.”

Fleming is not the only excited one. Wide receivers coach Brian Hartline, who revealed this spring that the wideout was operating at 75 percent the last couple of years due to the injury, sees marked improvements from the sophomore.

“It’s been awesome for him. I’m happy for him,” Hartline said of Fleming. “He just runs around like a freight train and he’s just been doing just a great job. I think you’d be interested to hear what coach Parker Fleming thinks of him on special teams and know what I think of him. He’s making an impact across the board. So him being able to clean that shoulder up and play basically healthy for the first time in the last three years, you can tell he’s just gaining momentum, which has been awesome.”

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While Fleming doesn’t see his freshman year as a lost season, he does concede that the head start he thought he would have by enrolling at Ohio State in January didn’t play out the way he expected. He still was able to get on the field for the Buckeyes in 2020, playing on offense in all eight games, but his production was clearly limited by his circumstances.

Feeling healthy and more like a true Scarlet and Gray wide receiver heading into 2021, Fleming can’t wait to exceed what he did last year and prove to Ohio State fans what kind of player he actually is.

“I would say I’m very motivated, yes,” he said. “Just to get out there, and like I said, just show what I’ve improved on. It’s gonna be different now with a fully operational shoulder. But I’m just excited, to say the least. I don’t know if there’s any extra motivation but I’ve just been trying to work my butt off in any way I can.”