COLUMBUS, Ohio – Few people will debate the ability of Urban Meyer and his staff's ability to recruit at a high level. Ohio State's recruiting classes under Meyer have been some of the highest rated classes not only in school history but among the best ever of the Rivals.com-era.
We have been waiting for enough years to go by however before opening up the books and looking position-by-position during Meyer's tenure at Ohio State to see who some of the highest rated players have been at each spot and more importantly, if the rankings held true and the highest rated players in fact had the best careers with the team.
Largely, that is not always the case. Ohio State has had some of its best players come from the ranks of the three-star range while some of the highest rated players did not fare as well or the jury is still out on them.
We are going to spend the next several days going through each spot and ranking the players by way of the rankings and seeing who had the best careers. These lists are only open to players that were recruited by Meyer and his staff and not players who Meyer may have coached that were recruited before he arrived in Columbus.
Offensive Line
Meyer has long said that his teams are an offensive line-driven type of team and we felt there was no better spot to start than with the big guys up front. Recruiting offensive line is difficult for even the best when it comes to projecting at a high 'hit-rate' on who is going to be successful and who might not quite get there.
Ohio State's offensive line recruiting has had some issues under Meyer earlier in his career with the team and 2018 is going to be a year with a lot of questions as many of the previous names on the line have moved on and several guys who are long on talent and maybe a little short on experience are going to have to step up.
Right off the bat, Ohio State's highest rated offensive lineman under Meyer has not played a down of college football and is only now getting accustomed to finding his way around campus. Nick Petit-Frere was the No. 11 player in the class of 2018 and comes in with all of the promise in the world and was a bit of a surprise recruit to many as people expected him to opt to go elsewhere. It is always tough to throw out a label as a 'cannot miss' type of player but NPF seems to have that kind of pedigree and could push for playing time as a true freshman here in year on.
