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 start with the most recent draft class, the class of 2021. We don’t have the benefit of seeing what anyone has been able to do in the league at this point with the start of their rookie seasons still months away. There has been plenty of buzz around players like Fields, Josh Myers and Wyatt Davis, among others.
Total Number of drafted players: 10
Average star rating of drafted players: 4.4
Highest rated player to be drafted: Justin Fields
Lowest rated player to be drafted: Luke Farrell
Biggest surprise: Shaun Wade sliding to the 5th round
The draft class of 2021 was another solid one for Ohio State but maybe a little lighter on the first day than many expected, at least when looking at a year prior. Shaun Wade had a potential first-round grade coming out of the 2019 season but opted to come back to better his game and improve his stock, the latter did not happen and by all accounts, the 2020 season was a challenge as Wade moved to the outside and the Buckeyes were stretched in the secondary after the injury to Cam Brown.
Players like Wyatt Davis and Pete Werner were mentioned as borderline first-round guys buy Werner would not go until the 2nd round and Davis was not even the first offensive lineman off the board for the Buckeyes with Josh Myers going ahead of him.
Even Justin Fields, the sure-fire first-rounder found himself sliding a little down the draft board as it seemed going into the season it would either be a Trevor Lawrence then Justin Fields or Fields then Lawrence top of the draft. For whatever reason, Fields would slide to the Bears (who moved up) at No. 11 and ultimately ended up in a better position than he could have, but the question will be, ‘When will he start’ with Bears’ brass saying it won’t be week one, in favor of Andy Dalton.
Ohio State would sign three-five stars (Fields would be four but came by way of transfer) and none of them would go higher than the 3rd round with Davis going No. 86 overall, Baron Browning would go No. 105 and then of course Wade would not go until No. 160.
Special mention going to Jonathon Cooper, who was in school longer than most due to redshirts and injuries and the former four-star and local product could have easily given up hope as his name was not called for two-plus days but he did come off the board to the Denver Broncos in the 7th round and by all accounts, is doing very well in Denver.
This first piece will be very different than most as we don’t have any NFL data to talk about in terms of careers with this being the most recent class but fast forward a couple of years and it will be interesting to see who got it right and who got it wrong.
