Ohio State has been a fixture in terms of programs that repeatedly put players into the NFL. You would have to go back to the 2013 draft class to find the last time that Ohio State put fewer than five players into the league by way of the draft.
In fact, Ohio State has put double-digit players in the draft through the past two classes, 16 into the first round over the past six classes and 55 total players over that same period.
It should come as no surprise that Ohio State has recruited well through the years, but that doesn’t always equate, sometimes highly-rated collegiate players don’t translate well to the NFL game and conversely, sometimes there are players who may have been lowly rated coming out of high school for one reason or another who flourish at the next level when football becomes a full-time job.
It got us to thinking about how the past dozen or so classes breakdown in terms of how the rankings numbers translate to the NFL for Ohio State. We will look at a list of questions and breakdown who we got right, who we may have missed on and a whole lot more. For the sake of this exercise, we are only going to talk about players who ended their career with the Buckeyes, so players like Joe Burrow, who signed out of high school with Ohio State, will not be counted but players like Justin Fields and Trey Sermon will count.
This class is a bit of an outlier for Ohio State, not only without a first-rounder but there are no second or third rounders in this class. Thad Gibson went in the 4th round and then three players would go in the 7th round. You have to go back to the 1990 class where Ohio State had fewer players taken in the top round, with that class containing a 5th, 7th and 9th.
Even with that, we are looking at a class that still produced a long-time NFL’er in Kurt Coleman, someone who made it a decade in the league.
2021 | 2020 | 2019 | 2018 | 2017 | 2016 | 2015 | 2014 | 2013 | 2012 | 2011 |
Total Number of drafted players: 4
Average star rating of drafted players: 3.8
Highest rated player to be drafted: Doug Worthington
Lowest rated player to be drafted: Austin Spitler
Biggest surprise: Kurt Coleman played for a really long time
All four members of this class would log multiple service years in the NFL. Gibson would be the only 4th rounder of the pick and had the shortest of the NFL careers, with just two seasons and four games played, two with San Francisco and two with Chicago. Gibson would record three tackles with the Niners and would force a fumble.
Worthington was a member of the Rivals100, as the No. 80 player in the nation for his class. He was one of three members of the Rivals250 in the class, with only Austin Spitler missing out on that designation. Worthington would quietly play for four seasons, two in Washington, one in Tampa and one in St. Louis. He would play in eight games, have three tackles.
Of course, Kurt Coleman is a household name, playing for 10 years, stops in Philadelphia, Kansas City, Carolina, New Orleans and Buffalo in 2019. He would play in 146 games, record 529 tackles in the regular season and have 21 interceptions. Coleman also was a figure off the field as he would be a co-founder of the Ohio State chapter of Uplifting Athletes.
People would be surprised to know that Spitler played for four seasons in the NFL, all four with Miami and would appear in 55 games in the regular season. He would have 30 tackles over the course of his career.
