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.
We turn the page to the draft class of 2020, the class that has one year of service time in the NFL, even if it was a different year in the midst of the global pandemic. Ohio State would put 10 players into the draft, some players would jump right into things, some would have a bit of a slower start but when you have a Defensive Rookie of the Year in the class, you are doing something right. We take a short trip down memory lane for some players that are still very fresh in your memories.
2021 |
Total Number of drafted players: 10
Average star rating of drafted players: 3.7
Highest rated player to be drafted: Chase Young
Lowest rated player to be drafted: Jonah Jackson
Biggest surprise: Damon Arnette going in the first round to the Las Vegas Raiders
Let’s get right to it, Chase Young was a success in year one, even if the Washington Football Team is not very good. And that is not taking anything away from Young or fellow Buckeye Terry McLaurin, but the NFC East is pretty much a disaster and WFT is right in line with the rest of the division (even if someone had to make the postseason, just because the rules state that is the case). Young would put up 7.5 sacks in his first year, be named Defensive Rookie of the Year and immediately find himself in the conversation of the most dominating pass rushers in the entire league.
That is the good, now it was not a good year for Jeffrey Okudah with the Lions as the Lions may be a worse team than anyone in the NFC East and the No. 3 overall pick had a slow start before his season came to an abrupt end by way of injury. 2021 is a new year and the hope is that last season was an outlier as Okudah looks to bounce back healthy.
As we mentioned, the biggest surprise is Damon Arnette going in the first round, but who are we to judge what Mike Mayock and Jon Gruden come up with. Arnette played in only eight games over the course of the season and the jury is still out there but with Arnette going as early as he did, the expectations of the Oakland/LA/Oakland/Vegas Raiders are high, so a strong NFL sophomore season will be a must.
The other candidate for the surprise of the draft would have been just how well Jordan Fuller played in year one, despite going in the 6th round. Sure, we see players go late, or even undrafted, and go on to stellar careers. Put Fuller in that category with the LA Rams as he stepped in early and never relinquished his starting role.
JK Dobbins made the most out of his opportunity with Baltimore, rushing for 805 regular season yards plus 85 in the postseason for a combined 10 touchdowns. Look for Dobbins to have a larger role in 2021.
It is still very early with this class and while most of the players had a chance to go on and play in 2020, with opt-outs, uncertainty about this game being player or that game not being played, it is still difficult to have a great read on the success of the class as a whole but there are a lot of guys who will need a big second season to really take that next step and cement themselves into roster spots moving forward.
