The NFL cares more about who wins the College Football Playoff national championship than most fans do. Just look at the past five years of first-round NFL Draft selections.
Since 1968, only eight programs have seen five of their players selected in the first round of the same NFL Draft, and three of those classes represented have all come in the 2020s. This year, Ohio State could make history with top-10 NFL Draft picks — and without a quarterback in the mix.
Looking back at past draft classes across all rounds, LSU (2019) had five players from that championship-winning group selected in the 2020 NFL Draft. Alabama (2020) had six players selected in the 2021 NFL Draft after it won the national title, and Georgia (2021) had five players drafted in 2022 after it won it all.
Of that trio, only Georgia’s 2021 draft class didn’t feature a quarterback selected in the first round. LSU’s Joe Burrow (2020) and Alabama’s Mac Jones (2021) were each top-15 picks. Digging just a little deeper into elite draft classes from a singular program, only the 2020 Alabama squad had three of its players selected inside the first 10 picks of the draft this decade. That’s tied with seven other programs for the most selections in the first 10 picks of any draft.
There’s one program that stands apart, though, not unlike the NFL’s 1972 Miami Dolphins, with an NFL Draft record that many believed might never be duplicated: 1967 Michigan State. That year, four players off the 1966 Michigan State national championship team were top-10 NFL Draft picks.
Heading into the 2026 NFL Draft, Ohio State could become the first program in modern history to duplicate the Spartans’ feat with four potential top-10 picks. And the Buckeyes could do it not only without a quarterback but also with just one offensive player selected: wide receiver Carnell Tate, safety Caleb Downs and linebackers Sonny Styles and Arvell Reese.
These now-former Ohio State players were part of a team that didn’t so much as sniff playing in the national title game last season and have not won a Big Ten title in their careers. Yet, the Buckeyes have developed four stars who could all hear their names called before the dinner served on the West Coast has a chance to get cold.
Arvell Reese during the 2026 NFL Scouting Combine. (Photo by Cooper Neill/Getty Images)
Given what NFL Draft analysts and NFL player personnel department members have intimated about Ohio State, the best team in the sport — perhaps the team that should’ve defeated Indiana in the Big Ten title game and on the way to a national championship — should’ve done more.
“That’s right,” an NFL area scout for a team with a top-10 pick told me. “Just take the Reese kid, for example. I’m a college football fan. I know about the Downs kid. I know about [the] Styles kid and [the] Tate kid, but their best player is [Reese], a guy who couldn’t even get onto the field until 2024. They’re loaded.
“It’s Ohio State. They’re always loaded, but I would call last year a letdown based on what the league thinks of their class.”
After dropping the Big Ten championship matchup in December to eventual national champion Indiana, the Buckeyes lost to Miami (Fla.) in the CFP quarterfinals.
A quarterback in this class would elevate it to a different level, just as it would’ve for Georgia in 2022. However, unlike the Bulldogs, the Buckeyes have a signal-caller in Julian Sayin that many believe will be a first-round selection in 2027. That was not the case with former Georgia passer Stetson Bennett, who never projected as a first-round talent and was ultimately selected in the fourth round.
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And unlike Georgia head coach Kirby Smart, Ohio State’s Ryan Day has a knack for developing quarterbacks into first-round NFL Draft selections. He did it with Dwayne Haskins, Justin Fields and again with C.J. Stroud — and that’s just since he joined the Buckeyes in 2017. That part is well-known.
What Day and his staff have done at other positions, particularly wide receiver, is about to become just as prominent a fact.
Consider not just that Ohio State wideouts have become prized commodities in the NFL but also that such a development has been recent and consistent. Between 2008 and 2021, the Buckeyes didn’t develop a single first-round selection at wide receiver, despite players like Michael Thomas (a second-round pick) and Terry McLaurin (a third-round selection) turning out to be All-Pro-caliber wideouts in the NFL.
Since 2022, however, no program has a better claim to “WRU” than the Buckeyes. In fact, Ohio State has had a wide receiver selected in the first round of the NFL Draft every single year since then. No other program has seen more than three consecutive years of wideouts selected from its program, and there are only two on the list: Tennessee (1982-1984) and Alabama (2020-2022).
Carnell Tateparticipates in drills during 2026 Ohio State Pro Day. (Photo by Jason Mowry/Getty Images)
I’m only counting years, not players. If I counted players, the Buckeyes have had five wide receivers selected in the first round of the NFL Draft in the past four years. If Tate is drafted in the first round on Thursday, that would make him the sixth Ohio State receiver selected in the first round in five consecutive years.
Then there’s still the man who has been tagged as the presumptive No. 1 pick in the 2027 NFL Draft since the day he arrived in Columbus, Ohio: wide receiver Jeremiah Smith.
Smith, who presumably will join Sayin in the 2027 draft, could lead yet another rather remarkable Ohio State draft class next year while furthering what has become a burgeoning Buckeyes tradition of seeing a wide receiver selected in the first round. There are more on deck, too.
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The performance 6-foot-5, true freshman Chris Henry, Jr. put in just last Saturday during Ohio State’s spring game feels like a harbinger of what’s to come. Junior receiver Brandon Inniss earned the spot across the field from Smith that once belonged to former first-round pick Emeka Egbuka and Tate. If Inniss plays as well as his predecessors, he could join Smith in the first round of next year’s draft.
This is also proof that Ohio State’s recruiting strategy is working in this college football era filled with volatile transfer portal activity and undisclosed millions changing hands from businesses, universities and donors to players — dare I say “student-athletes.”
The Buckeyes’ brass understands its fans demand excellence, and the NFL is more than happy to take advantage of Ohio State’s appetite to develop and be the best football program in America.
