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Buckeye Talk: Ohio State podcast by cleveland.com

What the NFL Draft tells us about the talent gap between Ohio State and Michigan

Buckeye Talk: Ohio State podcast by cleveland.com

cleveland.com

Sports, Football

4.51.6K Ratings

🗓️ 5 May 2021

⏱️ 72 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Ohio State (10) and Michigan (eight) led the Big Ten again in total picks in the 2021 NFL Draft. Over the past five years, those two teams lead the conference in draft picks by a wide margin. Yet the gap in results between those two programs is huge as well. We looked back over five years of drafts to go beyond the raw numbers and shed a light on why Ohio State is lapping the Big Ten and why Michigan is not even the second-best program in its division. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

Hey, hey, where you been? But got to talk is about to begin. Hey, hey, hey, come on in.

0:30.7

Obvious numbers and then dig into maybe get behind the numbers a little bit. But Nathan,

0:37.6

why don't you lay down you just were saying them before we came on. The 2021 NFL draft,

0:43.8

let's reset how many picks the programs in the Big Ten hat. So 44 total for the entire Big Ten.

0:52.3

People know 10 of those were Ohio State. I think one of the telling stats and we're going to get

0:56.7

into that today, 10 for Ohio State, eight for Michigan, six for Penn State. So 24 draft picks

1:03.9

combined from those three programs and then 20 combined from the rest of the Big Ten. The other

1:09.2

11 programs in Big Ten have less than those three combined in this draft. I didn't go back and

1:13.6

look at every single draft, but I would imagine that's actually fairly close as you go year to year.

1:21.2

Yeah, I think that's probably right. This podcast might not be that long because it's like now

1:25.2

I'm ready to go behind the numbers. It's like, all right, those are the raw. It's like, what's the

1:28.2

point of like we're going to get to state obvious numbers. So there are the raw numbers and I went

1:33.5

back five years. The cohort that I used was the last five NFL drafts because that cuts off,

1:38.4

that does not count the ridiculous Ohio State 2016 NFL draft when they had 10 guys drafted in the

1:44.0

first three rounds and set a record. That's unusual. It's unfair to use the 2016 NFL draft as some

1:51.6

kind of norm for Ohio State, because even for a program that puts out NFL players, that was

1:56.5

above and beyond. So I didn't include that. So this is 17, 18, 19, 20, 21. The total number of NFL

2:04.2

draft picks in the Big Ten over the last five years. Ohio State 43 Michigan 36, that is not that much

2:12.4

of a difference. 43 to 36. Penn State 24, Iowa 20, Wisconsin 19. So that's like a top two,

2:22.8

right? And then like a next three. And then there's a big drop. Nobody else is in double figures.

2:27.0

Wisconsin is at 19. They're fifth. And then we get the Minnesota and Maryland each have nine.

2:34.1

Michigan State and Northwestern each have seven Purdue and Indiana each have six. Nebraska has

...

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