Esko safety Koi Perich spurns Ohio State and signs with Minnesota Football
Esko four-star safety Koi Perich spurns Ohio State and signs with PJ Fleck and Minnesota Gopher Football.
It’s been quite some time since the Northeastern section of Minnesota has produced a Big Ten football talent, but Esko’s Koi Perich has broken that pattern.
If you just take out what he’s done on the football field, he’s also a heck of an all-around athlete. Standing at 6-1, Koi averaged over 20 points per game the last two years on 25-win basketball teams. He’s also liable to put it on an enemy players head. On the track, he ran a 10.89 100m and a 22.29 200m this spring before a soft tissue injury wrecked the rest of his season, but as a sophomore, he won the Class A long jump as a 10th grade with a 21-5 attempt and took 6th in the triple jump.
Then you factor in what he did on the football field for Esko the last two years. On his 144 touches on offense, Perich averaged 13.6 yards per touch with 37 touchdowns. He totaled 132 tackles on defense with eight interceptions, five forced fumbles, and four sacks. And in the return game, he was a threat with nine return touchdowns in Esko’s last two seasons.
It’s why the Gophers offered him in September of 2022, and in short time, colleges such as Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, Vanderbilt, Northwestern, Washington, Michigan, and Wisconsin followed behind.
Perich committed to Minnesota back in the spring, but teams like Ohio State and Florida State made things much more interesting down the stretch for the North Star state’s best talent. Perich is a 4-star recruit in the 247Sports rankings. He is the country’s No. 84 overall prospect, the No. 8 safety prospect, and the No. 1 prospect in Minnesota.
He visited Ohio State last weekend, and the Buckeyes staff including head coach Ryan Day, traveled into Duluth on Friday night to make their one final push. Still, Perich opted to continue with the hometown Golden Gophers.
If one location on this Gopher squad under PJ Fleck has been extremely good, it’s been the free safety position. Antoine Winfield Jr. was a day-two NFL Draft pick and is currently one of the top safeties in the NFL. Tyler Nubin took over for Winfield and is departing Minnesota as their all-time interception leader. He projects as a top-75 overall draft pick in the 2024 NFL Draft.
Minnesota and Perich both hope that’s his future.
Leave a Reply