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.
Almost half of the 2017 Ohio State draft class went in the first round and all, but one player went in the first three rounds with only Noah Brown going in the 7th round. It should be little surprise that BIA was represented at the top of the class with three first-round defensive backs going, just continuing a theme from Ohio State draft classes.
Many of the names in this class are household names and while three of the seven taken were only three-stars coming out of high school, those three players went on to make a lot of plays for the Buckeyes and have put away a good amount of money in the league.
Total Number of drafted players: 7
Average star rating of drafted players: 3.7
Highest rated player to be drafted: Raekwon McMillan
Lowest rated player to be drafted: Pat Elflein
Biggest surprise: Noah Brown sticking in the NFL as long as he has
The three Buckeyes taken in the first round went almost rapid fire, with Lattimore going 11th, Hooker going 15th and Conley going 24th. It did not take long for Curtis Samuel to come off the board in the second round, going No. 30 overall to Carolina.
While people think about the law firm of Bosa, Bosa and Young as defensive rookies of the year, don’t forget that Marshon Lattimore also was a defensive rookie of the year in 2017 and has been a three-time Pro Bowler. Over the course of his career, Lattimore has started 57 games, has 10 interceptions, 230 tackles and has forced five fumbles while recovering four. He also has played in seven postseason games with two picks in the 2018 postseason.
Hooker is currently looking for a new team after playing his entire career in Indianapolis. He has started 34 games, played in 35 and has seven picks with 121 tackles. He only played in two games last season and saw the year come to an abrupt end due to an Achilles Heel injury.
Conley has had the least productive NFL career to date, starting with the (then) Oakland Raiders but then being traded in October of 2019 to Houston. His option was not picked up and he was made a free agent for 2021 and was put on injured reserve in September of 2020.
The next three Buckeyes off the board have all changed addresses as well as Curtis Samuel now finds himself in Washington, Raekwon McMillan is in New England and Pat Elflein is now with Carolina.
While Lattimore is still with the team that drafted him, so is Noah Brown, after playing five years with the Dallas Cowboys. Brown played in 16 games last year for Dallas and had 14 catches for 154 yards. Those numbers were high-water marks for Brown who has been more of a support player through the years and who has still not found the end zone as a receiver for Dallas.
