Ohio State just put four players in the top 11 picks of the 2026 NFL Draft. Carnell Tate went fourth overall to the Titans. Arvell Reese fifth to the Giants. Sonny Styles seventh to the Commanders. Caleb Downs eleventh to the Cowboys. Back-to-back years. Four first-round picks each time. The Ohio State NFL factory is not running hot right now. It is operating at a level the sport has not seen since Michigan State in 1967, and it is doing it while everyone keeps telling us NIL and the transfer portal changed everything.
Some recruits are out here taking $3 and $5 million guaranteed deals from programs that will never see a top-ten pick, thinking they are getting the money while they can. They watched this draft and did the math a few years too late.
Ohio State NFL Factory Just Broke a 59-Year-Old Record
The last time a school had four players in the top 11 picks of the same NFL Draft was Michigan State in 1967. That was 59 years ago. Ohio State just did it twice in a row.
In the last two drafts combined, Ohio State sent 25 players to the NFL, tying Georgia’s record from 2022 and 2023 for the most picks any school has ever produced in a two-year span. Twenty-five players. In two years. While going through coaching staff changes, portal battles, and a playoff loss to Miami. The factory did not care. It kept running.
Ryan Day has now had 20 first-round picks in his seven NFL drafts as Ohio State’s head coach. Urban Meyer had 14 in his entire Ohio State tenure. Jim Tressel had 14 in ten seasons. Day got there in seven.
Ohio State now has the most first-round picks of any program in the history of the NFL Draft with 99. USC is second with 86. The gap is 13. Ohio State is not in a different tier. It is in a different sport.
All 11 defensive starters from Ohio State’s College Football Playoff National Championship win over Notre Dame are now NFL Draft picks, with none selected lower than the fifth round. The starters, the backups rotating in, all of them. The entire 2024 championship defense became NFL players inside 15 months.
Day’s stated standard for Ohio State recruits is that every player should expect to be a first- or second-round pick. He has had 47 first- and second-rounders in seven drafts. Meyer had 24 in seven seasons. Tressel had 19 across ten full years. Day is not matching his predecessors. He is doubling them.
The NIL Math That Collapses Under Pressure
I get it. NIL changed things. A high school kid staring at a $4 or $5 million offer from a program promising him a featured role and early playing time can look at that and feel like the answer is obvious. That is real money. College players should be getting paid.
Texas Tech reportedly offered five-star offensive tackle Felix Ojo a $5.1 million deal over three years. That number made headlines. It is a serious offer.
The No. 32 pick in the 2026 NFL Draft, last in the first round, signed a fully guaranteed four-year rookie deal worth $16.1 million. Last. In. The. First. Round. Still more than three times what Texas Tech put on the table for Ojo. Carnell Tate at fourth overall is set for $48.7 million guaranteed over four years. Arvell Reese at fifth gets $45.6 million. Sonny Styles at seventh gets $35.5 million.
The ceiling on a big college NIL deal is the floor for Ohio State’s top draft picks. Any recruit running this comparison honestly knows how it comes out.
Tate went on the Rich Eisen Show before draft night and said it plainly: if you want to go first-round as a receiver, you go to Ohio State. That is not a recruiting pitch. That is five consecutive years of first-round receivers saying it with their draft position.
Ohio State does not have to tell you what they will do for your career. They hand you the last decade’s worth of draft results and let you read.
Five Straight Years of First-Round Receivers Is Not an Accident
Garrett Wilson and Chris Olave both went in the first round in 2022. Jaxon Smith-Njigba went in 2023. Marvin Harrison Jr. went fourth overall in 2024. Emeka Egbuka went in 2025. Carnell Tate went fourth overall in 2026. Five consecutive years with an Ohio State wide receiver in the first round, six first-round receivers in five drafts. No other school in the country has had more than three first-round receivers in that same stretch.
Brian Hartline built this. The man played nine NFL seasons as a receiver, came back to Columbus, and turned the Ohio State wide receiver room into the most elite position development program in the sport. He has since moved to head coach at USF, but he built the culture and the standard that is still producing first-rounders. When Tate went fourth, Hartline posted publicly about it. Dez Bryant responded. The NFL world knows what that room produces and treats it accordingly.
There is always a next one at Ohio State. Sometimes there are two.
What the 2027 Ohio State Pipeline Already Looks Like
Jeremiah Smith just finished his sophomore season with 1,243 receiving yards, 87 receptions, and 12 touchdowns, earning Big Ten Receiver of the Year honors. He is the early Heisman favorite heading into 2026. When he declares for the 2027 NFL Draft, he will almost certainly be Ohio State’s 100th first-round pick in program history. People are already debating whether a receiver goes first overall for the first time since Keyshawn Johnson in 1996. At 6-foot-3 and 223 pounds, some analysts already have him projected no lower than second overall regardless of quarterback depth in the class.
Julian Sayin, a redshirt freshman who is not eligible until 2027, is already being projected as a potential first-round quarterback by multiple analysts. In his first full season as a starter, Sayin completed 78.9 percent of his passes with 30 touchdowns and five interceptions. Ryan Day has developed Dwayne Haskins, Justin Fields, and C.J. Stroud into first-round quarterbacks. Sayin is working in the same system with the same coaching infrastructure. The track record speaks for itself.
Brandon Inniss has publicly said his goal is a first-round pick in 2027. If he plays the way his predecessors played at Ohio State, the Buckeyes could have two first-round receivers in the same draft class for the second time since 2022. Austin Siereveld at offensive guard has late first-round potential if he gets healthy and plays to his ceiling this coming season. True freshman Chris Henry Jr. at 6-foot-5 put together a spring game performance that already has people talking about him in the 2028 and 2029 range.
Ohio State led all schools with 11 players drafted in 2026, the most of any program in the country. For the second straight year. The Buckeyes did not win back-to-back national championships. They did not win every NIL battle. They lost some recruits to programs willing to write bigger checks. None of it slowed this down.
Any recruit sitting somewhere right now with a big NIL offer and real doubts about choosing Columbus needs to look at 25 players drafted in two years, look at four first-rounders in the top 11 picks two straight times, and think hard about which check actually matters. The biggest guaranteed money in college football is still smaller than what the last pick in the first round is walking out with. Ohio State keeps producing those picks at a rate nobody else in the country can match.
The 100th first-round pick is already on the roster in Columbus. His name is Jeremiah Smith, and the NFL has been watching him since he was a freshman.
