Breaking Down Ohio State's 2018 Roster by Recruiting Stars

Just ask Alabama, which has won five of the last 10 national titles and finished atop the 247Sports Composite Team Rankings for seven of the last eight years. The Crimson Tide have the most NFL Draft picks in the last decade (77), as well, a mark which includes a whopping 26 first-rounders.

Ohio State — with just 64 players drafted and only one national title since 2008, is a bit behind in both departments — but the Buckeyes continue to close the gap thanks to the two best recruiting classes in program history the last two cycles.

The 2017 recruiting class holds the distinction of having the highest per-player average of all-time (94.59), while last year’s haul topped that class in total points (317.06) because it had five additional commitments — though it trailed when viewed pound-for-pound (94.29).

“It cracks me up when [people] say the ratings don't matter,” Ohio State head coach Urban Meyer said on National Signing Day. "If they're keeping score, we’d like to win that thing. I do look at that. The recruiting services, although they are not 100 percent correct, they’re very close. A lot of those guys that are highly-rated guys turn out to be great players.

“You have the Darron Lees and some other under-the-radar guys that turn out to be phenomenal. The Josh Perrys. But that’s not always going to happen. When you start throwing around numbers like [a composite score of] 94 and five-stars and four-stars, those aren’t the end all, but sure they matter. We’re all competitive. We’re very competitive here. And to say we had one of the historical classes of all time, a lot of hard work went into that.”

RELATED Ranking Urban Meyer's Teams at Ohio State

With the season opener against Oregon State just over two weeks away, we’ve decided to take a look at where each player finished their high school careers in the composite rankings, which combines prospect ratings from 247Sports, ESPN, Rivals and formerly Scout.

As you’ll see, this year’s roster essentially swapped out a trio of three-star prospects from last year's team for five-stars Tyreke Johnson, Nicholas Petit-Frere and Taron Vincent — thus making this the most talented roster of Meyer’s seven-year tenure.