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.
The highly-regarded Brew Crew made its way to the draft and Mike Adams was the only one of the three linemen to hear his name called (Michael Brewster would go on through the UDFA route to play).
Four players were taken, and the star average gets thrown off because Nate Ebner, who was a perfect fit for everything that was asked of him in New England, was not ranked by Ohio State as a former walk-on. If you were to take his name off the list, the star ranking would have been 4.67 for Ohio State, by far the highest average star rating of the entire series.
2021 | 2020 | 2019 | 2018 | 2017 | 2016 | 2015 | 2014 | 2013 |
Total Number of drafted players: 4
Average star rating of drafted players: 3.5
Highest rated player to be drafted: Mike Adams
Lowest rated player to be drafted: Nate Ebner
Biggest surprise: Simply that Nate Ebner was picked and how long he made it in the league
Mike Adams was a top-five national recruit his year and one of the biggest gets for Ohio State during the Rivals.com-era (2002-present). The NFL evaluators were not quite as sold when it was time for the draft with Adams slipping until the late second round, the No. 56 pick overall to Pittsburgh. Adams would sign a 3.54-million-dollar contract for four years but would be released in May of 2016 after failing a physical. Adams would attempt a comeback a few years later as a tight end.
Posey would be selected by Houston and would play 26 games, starting in just one during the 2014 season. He would have 22 catches but would not find the end zone but of his catches, nearly 41-percent of them would account for first downs.
Boom Herron would go on to a four-year NFL career between Cincinnati, Indianapolis and Buffalo and would play in 35 games, starting in three. He would score his lone NFL regular season touchdown in 2014, a 49-yarder against Washington. Herron would find the end zone twice during that postseason however in games against Denver and Cincinnati.
Ebner was the quintessential special teamer, a former rugby player that would not allow doors to be closed for him. Ebner did not play college football his first two years out of high school, instead playing international rugby before going on to walk-on with Ohio State. Ebner would blow up at Ohio State’s Pro Day with reported numbers of a 4.47 40-yard dash, 39.5-inch vert and 23 reps of 225 on the bench press. He would catch the eye of the Patriots and would go No. 197 overall, still good for a four-year deal worth just shy of 2.2-million. Ebner would play with the Pats through the 2019 season and then would play one-year with the Giants in 2020.
