There was a Josh Pate segment on his youtube show that stated that the team with the most first round picks in the NFL draft in the previous 6 seasons has won the National Championship every single one of those seasons.
In his segment, he brought up how Ohio State is projected to have the most first round picks in the 2024 NFL Draft with an average of 5 first round picks between 3 different mock drafts (PFF, Athletic, and CBS). Because of this, he picks Ohio State as his preliminary favorite to win the National Title this season.
Link to the segment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3aWjL6Iehc
However, only having three different mock draft sources isn't too much and create a lot of variance in the outcomes.
Fortunately, I was able to find a website that aggregates a TON of different mock draft sources together to give a robust "Big Board" projection of where players are expected to go. This website aggregates at the time of writing a total of 25 Big Boards, 82 Mock Drafts, and 21 Team Mock Drafts.
Link to the Website: https://www.nflmockdraftdatabase.com/big-boards/2024/consensus-big-board-2024
The takeaway from this projected big board is not only is Ohio State projected to have the most first round picks in the 2024 draft, they're projected to have the most picks by a WIDE margin.
Here's where the Big Board has our players projected at the moment:
1st Round -
- 2nd Overall - MHJ
- 8th - JTT
- 9th - Egbuka
- 16th - Michael Hall Jr
- 17th - Denzel Burke
- 25th - Donovan Jackson
- 27th - Treveyon Henderson
2nd Round -
- 37th - Jack Sawyer
- 52nd - Tyliek Williams
- 57th - Tommy Eichenberg
We are projected an absurd SEVEN first round picks and another three second round picks. An interesting note here is that our entire starting DL unit is projected to go in the first two rounds as well as one LB and one CB.
To put this into context vs the rest of the teams in the country, here's where we stand:
- Ohio State - 7 First, 3 Second
- Clemson - 3 First, 4 Second
- Bama - 3 First, 1 Second
- Georgia - 1 First, 4 Second
- Texas - 2 First, 1 Second
- Washington - 2 First, 1 Second
- Penn St - 2 First, 1 Second
- LSU - 2 First, 0 Second
- USC - 2 First, 0 Second
- Miami - 1 First, 2 Second
- Michigan - 0 First, 2 Second <-Someone explain the hype to me
As you can see from above, we have double the first round picks as the next closest team.
This is clearly a product of our ridiculous 2021 recruiting class coming to fruition, specifically on the defensive side of the ball. We recruited abysmally on the defensive side of the ball in the 2019 and 2020 classes and it's showed big time the pas few years. Fortunately with the 2021 class onwards, the defensive recruiting picked up significantly and I believe this year will be the first we see the fruits of that.
