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 classes get smaller as we continue this series and no class through our run (we will go through the class of 2009) will be larger than seven players, even the 2011 class that had five go in the traditional draft and then one in the supplemental draft.

Ohio State has had a first rounder in its last six classes and this one marks the first time that the Buckeyes have not had someone go in round 1 with Devin Smith coming off the board at pick No. 37, early second round. In traditional fashion, an Ohio State defensive back will come off the board, Doran Grant goes to Pittsburgh in the 4th round but there really is not that huge name, at least in NFL terms, in this class.

2021 | 2020 | 2019 | 2018 | 2017 | 2016

Total Number of drafted players: 5

Average star rating of drafted players: 3.4

Highest rated player to be drafted: Michael Bennett

Lowest rated player to be drafted: Devin Smith, Jeff Heuerman, Evan Spencer

Biggest surprise: Devin Smith did not have more NFL success than he did

Looking at this five-man class, who would have said that Jeff Heuerman would have more career games played than the other four players combined? Especially when everyone wants to make jokes about Ohio State not utilizing the tight end. But when you look at Heuerman in this class and Nick Vannett in the year after, you have a pair of players with some longevity in the league, something that is hard to come by these days, even well on the heels of the joke of the NFL standing for “Not For Long”.

For the way that Devin Smith emerged on the scene with the Buckeyes, there were a lot of expectations that he would be able to do some of that in the NFL, sadly that never materialized. Smith played for three seasons, a 2015-16 run with the Jets, the team that drafted him and then a short run with Dallas in 2019. Smith would have two career touchdowns, 15 receptions and just never found the same mojo that propelled him in college, despite his deep-ball skills and speed.

Doran Grant would go No. 121 overall and never make it into an NFL game, being a final cut by the Steelers and then bouncing around between Buffalo, NY Giants, Jacksonville and Chicago. Grant did sign a deal with the Atlanta Legends of the AAF (Alliance of American Football) but the league folded before he could ever play. Grant would then sign a deal with the DC Defenders of the XFL, but that league would fold before he could ever play a game. Just for good measure, Grant would sign a deal with Winnipeg of the CFL but the league would cancel the 2020 season due to COVID and Grant would opt-out of that deal.

The reason that we have three players listed as the lowest rated player to be drafted is because all three were RR 5.7 three-stars and there is no differentiation in those rankings to stack the players. This is the only instance in this series where this happens in terms of lowest-rated player (we will have a tie for highest in a couple of days).