Three Buckeyes honored as Walter Camp All-American selections
COLUMBUS — Ohio State entered the year with one of the best rosters in all of college football. The postseason honors are reflecting that.
Three Buckeyes were named to the Walter Camp All-American teams on Thursday night; two of them are first-team All-Americans from the Walter Camp Football Foundation.
Center Seth McLaughlin and safety Caleb Downs are both first-team selections. Both Downs and McLaughlin transferred to Ohio State from Alabama this past offseason after starting last season for the Crimson Tide. They’re now closer to becoming consensus All-American selections, which would give them a tree in Buckeye Grove.
Caleb Downs has 62 total tackles, 6.5 tackles for loss, three pass deflections and an interception — which came last weekend in the loss to Michigan — on the season. He also has a 79-yard punt return for a touchdown to his name this year.
He won the Big Ten Defensive Back of the Year award and was a finalist for the Thorpe Award — but didn’t win the honor.
Superstar freshman wide receiver Jeremiah Smith is a second-team All-American selection for the Buckeyes. He finished the regular season with 57 catches for 934 yards and 10 touchdowns during his first year on campus, a remarkable stat line for a first-year receiver.
Smith was named the Big Ten Freshman of the Year and the Big Ten Wide Receiver of the Year last week when the league released its awards and honors.
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Ohio State center Seth McLaughlin wins Rimington Trophy
On Thursday night, McLaughlin won the Rimington Trophy, given annually to the top center in college football.
McLaughlin became the fourth center in Ohio State history to win the award. He joins LeCharles Bentley (2001), Pat Elflein (2016) and Billy Price (2017) as Buckeyes centers to win the award, which has been given out since 2000.
McLaughlin beat out Cooper Mays of Tennessee, whom the Buckeyes host Dec. 21 in the College Football Playoff first round, and Jacob Gideon of Western Michigan. Both of those two played in every game for their respective teams, while McLaughlin only played 10 games before his injury that he suffered the week of the Indiana game.
The senior center McLaughlin is also a Walter Camp First-Team All-American. The Walter Camp team is the first of the Big Five All-America teams from which consensus and unanimous All-America distinction is derived.
The Rimington Trophy committee uses a composite of three major All-America teams — The Walter Camp, The Sporting News and the Football Writers Association of America — to determine the winner. As the committee posted in its press release about the three finalists:
