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The 2020 NFL season isn’t over yet, just the Super Bowl between the Kansas City Chiefs and Tampa Bay Buccaneers – no Buckeyes in that one. But for most teams, the season is over. That means attention turns to building for next year, and while free agency is still in place, the primary source of roster creation comes from the NFL Draft.
In the last few weeks since the end of the college football season, eligible players have decided to either go to this spring’s NFL Draft or return for another season at their school. A number of Ohio State players have chosen to head to the NFL after productive careers at Columbus, meaning teams should choose from another talented class of Buckeyes.
While we won’t know the final order until after the Super Bowl in early February, and the needs of the teams will change to some extent in the months to come before the project, there’s enough information to start delving into some. simulated blanks. ESPN’s Mel Kiper released his initial projections for the first round of the draft on Tuesday and there are a few surprises from Scarlet and Gray’s perspective.
The first is that Kiper has the former Ohio State quarterback Justin fields, long considered the second-best quarterback in the draft, dropping to 7th place against the Detroit Lions. In Kiper’s simulation project, Fields is the third quarterback on the board, after Clemson Trevor Lawrence (No. 1 overall for the Jacksonville Jaguars) and BYU Zach Wilson (No. 4 overall for the Atlanta Falcons).
Here is what Kiper wrote about Fields and the choice after giving “a slight advantage to Wilson at the moment “:
Things change quickly in the NFL. Before the Saturday news that the Lions were going to trade strategist Matthew stafford this offseason i would have said they should keep Stafford and try to help him with a wide catcher in this draft. Alabama Jaylen waddle would have come back here. But instead, it looks like new GM Brad Holmes and coach Dan Campbell will go all-in on a rebuild, and so Fields could be the face of it. He’s had a season of ups and downs, but we’ve seen flashes of his talent, especially in his six touchdown performance against Clemson in the semifinals of the college football qualifiers. Fields has superstar potential, but he’ll need help around him. Detroit will need to figure out what it’s doing with free agent eliminations Kenny golladay and Marvin Jones Jr. and make sure Fields has a chance to pass the first year.
The bizarre tale that Fields had “a season of ups and downs” is perpetuated by Kiper in this simulation project, and perhaps some NFL general managers and head coaches will agree. But Fields had at least 300 total yards on offense and a minimum of three touchdowns in every regular season game this season. Then there was the record-breaking playoff performance Kiper alluded to, followed by a mediocre national championship game against Alabama where an injured Fields still had 261 total yards.
Those games that some believe to be “down” were the Indiana Game and the Northwest Performance. As Fields threw three interceptions against a Hoosiers defense that finished second in the country forcing the opposing quarterback to throw the ball to them, he also threw for 300 yards, 78 rushing yards and a total of three touchdowns. . Against Northwestern in the Big Ten Championship Game, Fields was not himself with just 114 passing yards and two interceptions, but he was without his best wide receiver in Chris Olave against a top 20 pass defense.
If NFL teams watch Fields’ two years at Ohio State and don’t believe he’s one of the top two quarterbacks, that’s up to them. But it’s hard to imagine a player who totaled 5,701 passing yards and 67 touchdowns for nine interceptions during his college career while playing in the SEC and the Big Ten and appearing in two college football playoffs. , where he performed well, not making it into the top five.
The other weird thing about Kiper’s first simulation project is that Fields is the only Buckeye he took off the set in the first round. The main snub here is the old scarlet and gray guard Wyatt davis, who was a unanimous All-American in 2020. Instead, Kiper has five other offensive linemen selected in the first round, none of whom have accomplished as much as Davis did with Ohio State.
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A lot will change before the NFL Draft begins in late April, but it’s strange to see the players who helped the Buckeyes reach the National Championship get so little love early in the process.
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