All throughout the offseason, we at Scarlet and Gray Report will start the day by answering a question related to Ohio State football, whether it has to do with the team in 2022, recruiting or looking back at past teams and players.

Ohio State will have plenty to cheer for Sunday.

Seven former Buckeyes will take the field with a chance to get to the Super Bowl, including defensive end Nick Bosa and running back Trey Sermon and Los Angeles Rams safety Jordan Fuller, who is out for the rest of the season with an ankle injury.

But no team is filled with more Buckeyes than the Cincinnati Bengals.

All five Ohio State alums played together in the 2015 season: safety Vonn Bell and cornerback Eli Apple, along defensive end Sam Hubbard, quarterback Joe Burrow and offensive tackle Isaiah Prince, who were each in the 2015 recruiting class.

The five represent a golden era for Ohio State football from 2013 — the start of Bell’s first season with the Buckeyes, — to 2018: Prince’s final year on the Buckeyes’ offensive line. It was a span where Ohio State went to the College Football Playoff twice and won a national title.

Now after crossing paths at Ohio State, those five are not starting for the Cincinnati Bengals in the AFC Championship game Sunday against the Kansas City Chiefs.

At the next level, Bell, Hubbard, Apple and Prince have found a home.

Since being selected 10th overall by the New York Giants in the 2016 NFL Draft, Apple has five interceptions in 73 games, finishing with 75 tackles between the Giants and New Orleans Saints in 2018.

Bell, a second-round draft pick in 2016 by the Saints, has not had a season in which he has recorded less than 83 tackles as a safety, adding 22 career tackles-for-loss and 8.5 sacks in six seasons split between the Saints and Bengals.

Prince, has found a place as a starter as of late after being drafted in the sixth round of the 2019 NFL Draft by the Miami Dolphins, starting six of the Bengals last seven games at tackle, allowing four sacks, five hits, 16 hurries and 25 pressures this season.

At defensive end, Hubbard, a third-round pick in 2018 by the Bengals, found a stable piece to their rushing attack, recording 24 sacks and 34 tackles for loss, including two double-digit seasons in 2019 and 2021, in four years.

But the majority of the focus has been on one player, the player Buckeye fans can tend to think of as, “the one that got away.”

Joe Burrow: the homegrown quarterback that brought the Cincinnati Bengals back to prevalence.

With Burrow, it’s easy to think about what could have been if he stayed with Ohio State.

Redshirting the 2015 season, the Athens, Ohio native — a former three-star quarterback, the No. 24 dual-threat quarterback in the 2015 class and the No. 29 player from the state of Ohio — completed 22 of his 28 pass attempts in five games for the Buckeyes, recording 226 passing yards and three all-purpose touchdowns.

In 2017, that workload was cut down with the emergence of redshirt freshman quarterback Dwayne Haskins behind J.T. Barrett, completing seven passes on 11 attempts for 61 passing yards in five games.

When Haskins won the job in the spring of 2018, Burrow found a home elsewhere, breaking out as a record-breaking, Heisman-toting quarterback at LSU, leading to him being selected as the first overall pick of the 2020 NFL Draft.

In two years with Cincinnati, Burrow has developed into the face of the franchise, leading the league in completion percentage, yards per pass attempt and adjusted yards gained per pass attempt, along with sacks and yards lost on sacks. His combination with former LSU wide receiver Ja’Marr Chase in the passing game has helped him be in the running for NFL Comeback Player of the Year and his receiver Rookie of the Year.

But with a Heisman Trophy, a No. 1 draft selection, an AFC North title and a AFC Championship bid to his name — the Bengals’ first since 1989 — Burrow knows that his time in Columbus helped make him into the player he is today.

“I wouldn’t be the player I am today without those trials and tribulations that I went through there,” Burrow said leading up to the AFC Championship game. “I loved my time there. I stay in contact with a lot of people from my time at Ohio State. Like I said, I wouldn’t be the same player. I am what I am because of the difficult times I have been through throughout my career.

“If you look at quarterbacks that have been in the playoffs, a lot of them have been through a lot of adversity throughout their careers, whether it was early on in high school without offers or after college not getting drafted high, having to go to a junior college or anything like that. I think part of what makes certain people great is the adversity they’ve had to go through.”