Buckeyes in the NFL: Lantern sports staff picks its 2025-26 Buckeye superlatives

Jack Diwik
Thu, 29 Jan 2026 04:03:24 +0000
Football, Instagram Page, News, Sports, Big Ten football, Big Ten to NFL, Buckeyes in the NFL, Chris olave, Jaxon Smith-Njigba, Lantern sports Ohio State, Mike Vrabel, New England Patriots, New Orleans Saints, NFL, NFL awards, NFL Coach of the Year, NFL MVP, NFL news, NFL playoffs, NFL Rookie of the Year, Ohio State athletics, Ohio State Buckeyes, Ohio State championships, Ohio State defensive players, Ohio State draft picks, ohio state football, Ohio State football alumni, Ohio State football coaching tree, Ohio State football history, Ohio State football legacy, Ohio State in the NFL playoffs, Ohio State national champions [and 16 more]

Chris Olave, Mike Vrabel, TreVeyon Henderson and Jaxon Smith-Njigba are all former Buckeyes that The Lantern’s sports desk wanted to highlight. Credit: TNS

Twenty-two Pro Bowl selections.
Four league award winners.
Three Super Bowl champions.

Over the past five seasons, Buckeye football alums have been making their mark at the next level. This comes as no surprise, as Ohio State has had 503 players selected in the NFL draft since 1936, trailing only USC and Notre Dame.

The program has had a resounding reputation of producing some of the league’s best players.

This year was no different.

With the NFL season winding down and 10 days remaining until Super Bowl LX, Ohio State will once again be represented on the sport’s biggest stage when the New England Patriots face the Seattle Seahawks in San Francisco. Jaxon Smith-Njigba, Thayer Munford and TreVeyon Henderson are set to compete for a Lombardi Trophy, while former Buckeye defensive end Mike Vrabel leads the Patriots from the sideline.

But even beyond the Super Bowl rosters, Ohio State’s league-best 67 alumni on active NFL rosters continued to make their mark across the league.

Here are The Lantern sports staff’s Buckeye NFL superlatives for the 2025-26 season.

MVP: Jaxon Smith-Njigba

Jaxon Smith-Njigba was just a sophomore when then-Buckeye superstar Garrett Wilson said something that caught the attention of Buckeye Nation.

“Jaxon is as good as I’ve ever seen, probably the best I’ve ever seen,” Wilson said four days before Ohio State’s 2021 season opener against Minnesota.

It was a bold statement for a receiver who totaled 49 yards as a freshman, but Smith-Njigba did more than live up to it.

He followed with a historic sophomore season, hauling in 95 receptions for 1,606 yards and 13 touchdowns, capped by a school-record 347 receiving yards in a Rose Bowl win over Utah. Even after a hamstring injury limited him to three games as a junior, Smith-Njigba’s trajectory never wavered.

Selected 20th overall by the Seattle Seahawks in the 2023 NFL Draft, Smith-Njigba delivered two steady seasons to begin his NFL career, totaling 1,758 yards and 10 touchdowns. He blew past those marks in his third year.

Now the favorite to win NFL Offensive Player of the Year, Smith-Njigba was unstoppable, catching 132 passes for 1,965 yards and 12 touchdowns to lead Seattle to its fourth Super Bowl appearance.

Smith-Njigba was the unanimous choice for MVP by The Lantern sports staff.

Comeback Player of the Year: Chris Olave

Not many players have overcome more than Chris Olave.

Since being drafted in 2022, Olave has suffered four concussions that saw him miss 11 games in his first three seasons as a New Orleans Saint. After two concussions in 2024, the 24-year-old first-round pick contemplated retirement.

“I was only 24 years old, contemplating retirement, especially with the head injuries,” Olave said after a Dec. 21 game against the New York Jets. “But I prayed about it. My fam, my close fam, was around me. They stuck by my side and I just gave it another try.”

It was a decision that paid off.

Olave rebounded with the best season of his NFL career, finishing with 100 receptions for 1,163 yards and nine touchdowns while appearing in 16 of 17 games for the Saints. Once again, he looked like the polished, dependable receiver he was drafted at No. 11 overall to be.

That reputation was forged at Ohio State as part of one of the most loaded wide receiver rooms in college football history alongside Smith-Njigba and Wilson. Olave closed his Buckeye career with 176 receptions for 2,711 yards and 35 touchdowns, but his arrival on the national stage came much earlier.

As a true freshman in 2018, Olave blocked a punt and scored the first two touchdowns of his college career in a 62-39 win over Michigan, a breakout performance that etched his name into Ohio State lore and announced his presence on the sport’s biggest stage.

Now healthy and thriving again, Olave’s path from that moment against the Wolverines to a career-defining NFL season earns him The Lantern sports staff’s selection for Comeback Player of the Year.

Coach of the Year: Mike Vrabel

Mike Vrabel arrived in New England with a point to prove.?

After being dismissed following six seasons with the Tennessee Titans at the end of the 2023 season, Vrabel spent the 2024 year away from the sideline, working as a personal consultant with the Cleveland Browns while waiting for another opportunity to lead a franchise.?

When that opportunity finally came, Vrabel made the most of it.

In his first season back as a head coach, Vrabel took over a Patriots team that finished 4-13 and turned it into a 17-win Super Bowl participant, marking a 13-win turnaround – the largest two-season improvement in NFL history.

But long before his success on the sideline, Vrabel built his football foundation at Ohio State, where he starred as a defensive end from 1993-96. A two-time Big Ten Defensive Lineman of the Year, Vrabel set a school record with 36 sacks and went on to play 14 seasons in the NFL.?

Now a favorite to win NFL Coach of the Year in his first season with New England, Vrabel has solidified himself as one of the league’s premier head coaches.

“I can’t say enough about coach Vrabel,” Patriots offensive lineman Garett Bradbury said after Sunday’s AFC Championship win over the Denver Broncos. “His leadership and the vision he had for this team and how he built it – it’s awesome.”

Rookie of the Year: TreVeyon Henderson

TreVeyon Henderson’s rise to NFL stardom was a slow burn.?

Through the first seven games of his rookie season, Henderson totaled just 43 carries, splitting reps in the Patriots’ backfield with veteran Rhamondre Stevenson as he adjusted to the speed and physicality of the league. Questions swirled whether the running back was worth a second-round draft pick.

Those questions were quickly put to rest.

Henderson closed his rookie season as one of the NFL’s most effective first-year backs, finishing with 911 rushing yards on 180 carries, nine rushing touchdowns, and averaging 5.1 yards-per-carry, while adding 35 receptions for 221 yards and a receiving touchdown.?

As his role expanded down the stretch, Henderson’s explosiveness and versatility turned him into a weekly difference-maker and a central piece of New England’s offense.

That rise mirrored Henderson’s excellence at Ohio State, where he was a cornerstone of the Buckeyes’ 2024 national championship team and finished his career as one of the most productive running backs in program history with more than 3,700 all-purpose yards and 42 total touchdowns.

Henderson was one of 14 Buckeyes selected in the 2025 NFL Draft, tying a program record.?

Now, he and former Buckeye wide receiver Emeka Egbuka are finalists for NFL Offensive Rookie of the Year, with Henderson emerging as the favorite to become the third Ohio State player to win the award since 2020.