Grading Ohio State: Safeties and where Caleb Downs belongs among all-time Buckeyes

Diving into the play of Downs and Jaylen McClain this season, and how the group looks for the future

COLUMBUS — Safeties are up next in our breakdowns of Ohio State position groups. We’ll continue to grade each group on a scale of 1-100 with the help of Substack subscribers. A survey asking for grades for the first five position groups is in your email (and also here) and the survey for the next five position groups will go out in a few days.

Let’s get to the Ohio State safeties

What happened this year:

Caleb Downs became the third Buckeye to win the Thorpe Award as the best defensive back in college football. The previous two OSU winners were corners — Antoine Winfield and Malcolm Jenkins.

Downs also won the Lott Impact Trophy for the best defensive player in college football, an award that also includes a character component. He joined James Laurinaitis as OSU winners in the award’s 22-year history.

Downs also has been named a first-team All-American by Walter Camp and CBSSports.com, with more to come. He’s expected to be a unanimous first-team All-American, as he was last year.

Downs is tied for third on the team, with Caden Curry, with 60 tackles, while Jaylen McClain is sixth with 50 tackles. The two starting safeties barely left the field. McClain leads the OSU defense in snaps with 645 while Downs is third with 619. Next up in safety snaps is freshman Faheem Delane with 81 and redshirt freshman Leroy Roker with 78. The big dogs played a ton. Slot corner Lorenzo Styles did play 118 of his 397 snaps in a deep safety role when the Buckeyes went to a dime package with six defensive backs.

According to PFF, among qualifying power conference safeties, Downs had the No. 8 grade of 241 safeties, while McClain was No. 47.

Rating previous Ohio State position groups

• Special teams: 49

Safeties grades 1-100 (1 is bad, 100 is great)