Ohio State hasn’t had a wide receiver selected in the first round of the NFL draft since Ted Ginn Jr. and Anthony Gonzalez were both first-round picks in 2007, but it’s likely going to have two first-round wide receivers again this year.
Going into this week’s NFL Scouting Combine, Chris Olave and Garrett Wilson are both widely projected to be first-round picks in the 2022 draft. And they both credit Ohio State with playing a key role in helping them develop into top NFL prospects.
“They do a great job of that. They do probably one of the best jobs,” Wilson said Wednesday at his NFL Scouting Combine interview session. “Every year, you see all the people that come out and compete or participate in things like the combine and make an impact on the next level right away. And you gotta credit that to Ohio State. They do a great job developing all of us.”
As they prepare to work out in Indianapolis tomorrow, Olave says he feels like he’s been preparing for this moment since he arrived at Ohio State because of how hard they worked during their Buckeye careers.
“When you go to a place like Ohio State, you compete with the best every day, you play with the best every day,” Olave said Wednesday. “Just going against the best every day and competing with myself, mostly in the weight room, on the field, and even in the classroom, I feel like I’ve been preparing for this for a couple years.”
Olave specifically credited Ohio State wide receivers coach Brian Hartline, as well as the other wide receivers he played with at Ohio State who have already gone on to play in the NFL, with helping him develop into the player he is now.
“Just going in to (play for) the best receiver coach in the country in coach Hartline, getting developed by him and seeing a lot of older guys like Terry McLaurin, Parris Campbell, Johnnie Dixon, C.J. Saunders in front of me, I kind of learned from them a lot, took some stuff from their game and tried to put it into mine,” Olave said.
“When you go to a place like Ohio State, you compete with the best every day, you play with the best every day.”– Chris Olave
Wilson thinks spending the past three years learning from Hartline, who played in the NFL for seven years himself after his own Ohio State career, was invaluable to his growth as a receiver.
“He’s a great teacher,” Wilson said. “He’s the type of person that will show you what he wants you to do. He’ll show you and back it up. Being three or four years removed from the league when I got there, he was really good at running routes still. He could run the routes and look like he was still playing. So that made it easy on us watching and trying to mimic that.”
Wilson says Olave, who had already been at Ohio State for one year before Wilson arrived at Ohio State in 2019, also helped push him to become a better player.
“We’re always pushing each other to be better and be the best,” Wilson said. “We’ve had a great friendship. Coming in, being a freshman, having him as a sophomore, he had done everything (in his freshman year at Ohio State) I was hoping to do. So it was awesome seeing that.”
Now, Wilson and Olave are jockeying with each other for draft position, as they’re both expected to be among the top wide receivers off the board this year along with USC’s Drake London, Arkansas’ Treylon Burks and Alabama’s Jameson Williams – their former teammate for two years at Ohio State – among others.
But even though there could be teams deciding between drafting one of them or the other, Olave and Wilson will still be rooting for each other’s success when they work out on Thursday.
“Garrett’s my guy,” Olave said. “We're both happy for each other. He's a talent and one of those natural freaks, and I can't wait to see him perform and see the crazy numbers he’s gonna put up.”
Olave could have entered the NFL draft a year ago, but he says he has no regrets about returning to Ohio State for his senior year, which gave him the opportunity to be a part of the most productive trio of wide receivers, along with Wilson and Jaxon Smith-Njigba, in a single season in Ohio State history.
“That was huge, just being in that room,” Olave said. “We got a lot of younger guys that's looking up to us, and just to be able to put those performances on the field every Saturday, being alongside two of the best receivers in the country in Garrett and Jaxon. And I can't wait to see Jaxon and what he could do this year.”
Wilson also believes he was able to make his mark at Ohio State by mentoring the next generation of Buckeye receivers, such as rising sophomores Marvin Harrison Jr. and Emeka Egbuka, though he was disappointed that his final season at Ohio State ended without a trip to the College Football Playoff.
“We didn't win the national championship. That was my ultimate goal,” Wilson said. “But as far as leaving my mark on the room, I feel like I did a good job, especially the last couple of years of stepping up and taking some of the young dudes coming in and really trying to show them the way.”
Because they both had such productive careers at Ohio State – cumulatively, they finished their Buckeye careers with 319 catches for 4,924 yards and 58 touchdowns – neither of them really needs to participate in Thursday’s on-field workouts at the combine to establish himself as a top prospect. Nonetheless, both of them said Wednesday that they are planning to partake in on-field workouts on Thursday.
Wilson said he wants to prove he can run faster than 4.55 seconds in the 40-yard dash, which is what he has read some draft analysts have projected he will run.
“I gotta prove some people wrong on the 40,” Wilson said. “I’ve seen what people are saying about what they think I'm gonna run and I’m excited to get out there and do what I do.”
“Every year, you see all the people that come out and compete or participate in things like the combine and make an impact on the next level right away. And you gotta credit that to Ohio State. They do a great job developing all of us.”– Garrett Wilson
Olave said the only person he’s trying to prove anything to with his combine workout is himself, but that working out in the combine is an opportunity he’s dreamed of having since he was a kid.
“To finally be able to be here, it's definitely a blessing. I can’t put it into words,” Olave said. “I've been training for this for so long. And to get this once-in-a lifetime opportunity is a huge blessing. So I just want to go out there and compete against myself, it’s me vs. me, and show the world what I can do.”
If they perform as well as expected on Thursday, Olave and Wilson could solidify themselves as first-round draft picks. That’s a position they’re honored to be in, especially knowing how long it’s been since Ohio State has actually had a receiver drafted in Round 1.
“15 years, I feel like that streak is coming to an end, but just to be in that conversation in the first round, coming from where I come from, such a low-recruited guy, low-rated guy and just be able to put that hard work in and put God first, anything can happen,” Olave said.
That said, Wilson said he’s less concerned with how high he gets drafted than he is about landing with the right team and taking advantage of his opportunity once he gets there.
“A team taking a risk on me and believing in me, that means a lot but as far as what it comes with, I gotta prove myself once I get in the facility,” Wilson said.
