COLUMBUS, Ohio -- Ohio State football opens the 2017 season on Aug. 31 at Indiana. We're counting down the top 50 Buckeyes for this season, taking into account talent, past accomplishments, team need and potential.
No. 17: Kendall Sheffield, Sophomore, Cornerback
Height, weight: 6-foot, 183 pounds.
Hometown: Missouri City, Texas.
Where he was ranked last season: Sheffield was playing junior college ball at Blinn College this time last year.
What he's done: At Ohio State? Nothing. Well other than enroll early last spring and immediately insert himself into the cornerback rotation. That's pretty good. It's also exactly the reason the Buckeyes signed Sheffield in the 2017 recruiting class.
He played for one season at Alabama, but red-shirted and then transferred to Blinn College.
Why Sheffield is No. 17: We're ranking Sheffield here because we're assuming that he'll fulfill the role Ohio State envisioned for him. Though it hasn't always worked out this way during Urban Meyer's time with the Buckeyes, you don't sign junior college prospects unless there's a reasonable expectation that they'll start right away.
Sheffield and Damon Arnette are expected to rotate at corner with returning starter Denzel Ward. Trying to figure out which player -- Sheffield or Arnette -- should be ranked higher is a futile exercise because cornerbacks coach Kerry Coombs will tell you they're equal. They're rotating? They're equal. Coombs views Ward as being just as good as Marshon Lattimore and Gareon Conley were last year. He wouldn't have rotated them equally if he didn't.
That's the norm now.
Sheffield, the top corner prospect coming out of junior college and a one-time five-star high school prospect ranked the No. 4 corner in the country, has the potential to be as good as any that's come through Ohio State since this pipeline to the NFL started with Bradley Roby in 2014.
It's a little strange that Sheffield would transfer from Alabama after one year, especially considering that he was getting work among the top corners despite ultimately red-shirting in 2015. He's a potential one-and-done player because he's eligible for the 2018 draft, but he'll first have to show that he's the player the Crimson Tide and every other program that recruited him -- the Buckeyes included -- thought he was coming out of high school.
The top 50 Ohio State football players for 2017:
* If you missed the first half of our list, Nos. 50-26 are here.
No. 25: Michael Hill, DT
No. 24: Tracy Sprinkle, DT
No. 23: Demario McCall, RB
No. 22: Binjimen Victor, WR
No. 21: Terry McLaurin, WR
No. 20: Marcus Baugh, TE
No. 19: Michael Jordan, OL
No. 18: Damon Arnette, CB
No. 17: Kendall Sheffield, CB
No. 16: Coming Sunday