Ohio State trip takes Luke Lachey back ‘home’ amid breakout season as Iowa’s second tight end

IOWA CITY — Growing up a couple miles from Ohio State’s campus, Luke Lachey cannot count how many times he’s been to Ohio Stadium.

“My family has been season ticket holders for as long as I can remember,” Lachey said.

He spent many hours before and after games playing in the parking lots surrounding the 104,944-seat Horseshoe.

“I can think of so many times I was out there throwing the ball with my friends or my uncle’s friends,” Lachey said. “I never really thought I would play in there.”

Lachey’s chance to play on the Ohio Stadium turf rather than the surrounding parking lots will come Saturday as the Iowa tight end takes on No. 2 Ohio State — a school close to his and his family’s heart.

“It’s definitely a business trip at the end of the day, but it is a little bit more exciting to go home and play in Columbus,” Lachey told reporters Wednesday. “It means a lot to my parents and to my whole family.”

His father, Jim, was an All-America offensive lineman at Ohio State who later had a lengthy, accolade-filled NFL career. He has been the color commentator on Ohio State’s radio broadcasts for more than two decades.

His uncle, Ron, also was an offensive lineman for the Buckeyes.

His uncle, Rob, has been the head equipment manager at Ohio State since 2004 and has worked full-time on the equipment staff since 1994 — seven years before Luke was born.

His mother and three sisters all are Ohio State alumnae. The Lachey last name has 18 mentions in the 2022 Ohio State football media guide.

“(Luke) was born and bred to be a Buckeye,” said Jason Peters, Lachey’s high school coach at Grandview Heights.

‘Best thing’ for Lachey

The hometown Buckeyes recruited Lachey, but did not offer him a scholarship. Lachey and his family do not harbor any resentment toward Ohio State, though.

In fact, Ohio State’s snub of Lachey “might have been the best thing” for him.

“It all kind of worked out in the end for me,” Lachey said retrospectively. “I love where I am. I don’t think there’s a place better for me.”

He went to Ohio State’s prospect camp in June 2019 and competed for a scholarship offer. He received the call with the bad news from Ohio State offensive coordinator and tight ends coach Kevin Wilson.

Lachey and his father were driving to his family’s vacation spot on Bald Head Island in North Carolina at the time.

“I got off the phone with coach Wilson, and then right after that, I set up a visit to come to Iowa,” Lachey said.

Peters previously told Lachey he’ll know what the “right place” is when he gets “this feeling like I’m home” as he walks around there.

“When he was in Iowa, he called me and he said, ‘I think I’m home,’” Peters said.

He committed to the Hawkeyes a few weeks after the official visit.

A Buckeye and Hawkeye family

The Lachey family, despite its many Buckeye connections, has adopted the Hawkeyes as its second Big Ten team.

“Now I kind of look at it as I got a team in the Big Ten East and the Big Ten West,” his father said.

Luke’s mother, Ann, hasn’t tailgated at Ohio Stadium since 2019 because she has followed Luke to almost all of his games. The game at Illinois during the COVID-19-affected 2020 season is the only one she missed.

“She’s put in a lot of effort to be able to come to my games, and it means a lot to me,” Lachey said.

From purchasing enough tickets to having adequate space for the tailgate, the Lachey family has been preparing for this game for a while.

“The parking lot attendant, I told him about three weeks ago, he’s got to reserve me about four or five spots at once,” Jim said.

Jim estimated “maybe 60 to 80” family members and friends will be at the game, including Luke’s paternal grandparents who are in their 80s and early 90s.

Ohio State’s play-by-play announcer Paul Keels might be one of the most excited people for Saturday’s Lachey homecoming.

The longtime Buckeye broadcast partners were in the booth together for Ohio State-Rutgers when Luke had his first career touchdown catch in Iowa’s loss to Michigan.

“That was a pretty nice moment,” Jim said. “And then my partner Paul Keels brought it up about four times during the course of the ballgame. And I’m like, ‘OK Paul, that’s enough.’”

The responsibilities of being Ohio State’s color commentator limit how often Jim can watch his son play live.

Last year, he made it to four games. Saturday’s game will be his first of the season this year because Iowa and Ohio State had the same bye week.

Regardless of whether Jim is in the Kinnick stands or in the Ohio State press box broadcasting a Buckeye game, the father and son find time to talk about how Luke is doing.

“We’ll always talk on Sunday about the game or just about life,” said Luke, the youngest of five Lachey children.

Larger role in 2022

It’s been quite the 2022 season for Lachey, who already has more catches and receiving yardage through the first half of 2022 than in all of 2021.

Lachey’s 157 receiving yards, on nine receptions, are tied for third-best on the Hawkeyes with veteran wide receiver Nico Ragaini.

Iowa tight ends coach Abdul Hodge said Lachey’s emergence has “helped tremendously” with keeping defenses from paying too much attention to top tight end Sam LaPorta.

With defenses also having to pay attention to Lachey, it’s harder to double-team LaPorta. It was evident against Illinois, when LaPorta had a team-high nine catches for 100 yards.

“He’s been able to win those one-on-one matchups,” Hodge said. “Any time you can have two really good tight ends, and especially in this type of system, it’s going to really help and benefit the offense.”

Hodge believes Lachey has a “bright future,” and the sophomore’s “best ball is ahead of him.”

“He’s getting better at a really fast pace,” Hodge said. “He doesn’t flinch. Whether he makes a bad play or makes a good play, he gets back up. He gets back in the huddle. He wants to get better.”

Lachey’s size — he’s listed at 6-foot-6 and 252 pounds — and speed can be a difficult combination for opposing safeties and linebackers to defend.

“It gives you an advantage with that type of speed and athleticism you don’t see quite often,” Hodge said. “Obviously we take advantage of that.”

Physical transformation

Lachey has undergone a physical transformation on his way to becoming a Big Ten-caliber tight end.

Athleticism was never an issue for Lachey, who played cornerback and a hybrid wide receiver/tight end position in high school. He even played some quarterback in a pinch.

After losing his starting quarterback toward the end of the 2019 season and the backup quarterback in the first round of the playoffs, Peters turned to Lachey.

“We took our best athlete and made him a quarterback,” Peters said.

Lachey ran the ball for a 45- or 50-yard touchdown on his first play as quarterback, Peters still remembers. Later in the game, Lachey made a mistake on a counter play, but it worked out just fine.

“Luke goes the wrong way and goes like 56 yards, gets down inside the 5 (yard line) and there’s a timeout,” Peters said.

Lachey went up to Peters after the big gain and said, “I went the wrong way.”

Peters certainly was not upset about a 50-plus-yard run.

“I’ll let it go, man,” Peters told Lachey. “It’s OK.”

Lachey was athletic enough that Division I basketball seemed like a realistic pursuit.

“We did the AAU circuit with him,” Jim said. “That was his dream.”

Then, “all of a sudden” as Jim remembers it, Luke instead wanted to play tight end at the next level.

“I said, ‘you’re going to have to gain some weight,’” Jim said.

Luke did exactly that.

He weighed 212 pounds when COVID-19 began and his senior high school basketball season came to an end.

“After that, I just kind of lived in my weight room at home,” Lachey said. “I worked out a lot down there, probably four times during the week.”

By the time he was a true freshman at Iowa in 2020, he reached 237 pounds. This year, he’s officially 252 pounds.

Ryan Day, the head coach at his father’s alma mater, has “been watching his career closely” and has been “very impressed.”

“Knowing him and knowing his family, just proud of the way he’s played,” the Ohio State coach said.

Grandview Heights’ celebrity

Away from the football field, Lachey left quite the impression growing up in the Columbus area and going to school in Grandview Heights — a small suburb a couple miles southwest of Ohio Stadium and northwest of downtown Columbus.

“You can hear the buzz talking about, ‘Luke’s going to be here Saturday, he’s going to be playing against Ohio State,’” said Peters, who also teaches social studies at the high school. “Obviously most people here are Ohio State fans, but there’s a lot of people that will be pulling for 85.”

He’s practically a celebrity there, “but if you tell him that, he’ll start blushing and deny it,” Peters said.

Lachey was a server at the nearby church and often worked weddings in the summer.

“One of the priests called him the All-Pro server,” Jim said. “He did that until about eighth grade and got too tall for the cassocks, so he had to move on.”

One of Luke’s favorite priests has died, but another who is in his 80s closely follows Iowa football and roots for Luke.

On the other side of the age spectrum, Peters’ youngest son, now 8, said he wanted to be “Luke” for Halloween when he was 4 years old.

“Oh, Luke Skywalker, that’s pretty cool,” Peters told his son.

Peters was wrong. His son did not have the Star Wars character in mind. The Luke he was referring to was Luke Lachey.

“Why do you want to be Luke?” Peters asked.

“Because when I talk to him, he really listens,” the then-4-year-old said.

“That’s the genuine person that Luke is,” Peters said Wednesday, trying not to choke up at the touching moment from four years earlier. “The next generation — it was important to him. He wanted to make them feel special.”

Comments: john.steppe@thegazette.com