There are similarities between this year's Ohio State football team and the 2014 edition that ripped off an unexpected run to the first-ever College Football Playoff National Championship.
That '14 squad entered the year with a lot of question marks, replacing its top linebacker in Ryan Shazier, a first-round cornerback in Bradley Roby, its top rusher in running back Carlos Hyde and its most productive receiver in Corey Brown.
This year's Buckeyes face that challenge and then some as they work to find eight new starters on each side of the ball. But as the team grinds its way through fall camp and toward its season opener against Bowling Green on September 3, head coach Urban Meyer is drawing parallels to his title-winning Buckeyes.
"I think 2014 was the template that everybody wants," Meyer said of his team at Big Ten media days, according to Bill Rabinowitz of the Columbus Dispatch. "J.T. Barrett was buried in the depth chart, Darron Lee, Eli Apple, Zeke Elliott, Mike Thomas—those guys were no-names, and they became very good throughout the course of 2014."
That's where the biggest challenge lies for Meyer and the Buckeyes. The potential is there—Ohio State is loaded with talent after signing the Big Ten's best recruiting class in each of the last five years—but turning that potential into production will determine how successful the Buckeyes are this year.
They did that in 2014 when Lee stepped into the linebacker corps and provided the freakish athleticism that Shazier took with him to the NFL. Apple emerged alongside Doran Grant to create a formidable one-two punch at cornerback. Elliott made quick work of replacing Hyde by putting together one of the most historically productive seasons for a running back in school history. And Thomas, alongside senior Devin Smith, came together to form the Big Ten's best wide receivier duo.
Everything came together for that championship team two years ago because playmakers emerged to fill the void. Center Pat Elflein, one of the Buckeyes' team captains for 2016, is confident they'll reload once again, according to Tim Shoemaker of Eleven Warriors:
We’ve got a ton of talent. The program we put guys through, it’s a culture, it’s a foundation, it’s a process. With all the talent we have and putting those guys through this, the whole crucible of training that we have, we develop players and it’s worked.
It’s like the 2014 season when no one knew who Zeke was, no one knew who J.T. was and now we’ve got a whole other group of guys that I think will do the same type of thing, that’ll go out and play well.
Those new names are already emerging.
Dante Booker and Chris Worley are bringing even more overall athleticism to the linebacker corps than the departed Lee and Joshua Perry did the previous two years. The cornerback battle is a four-man race that's being paced by Denzel Ward, the fastest player on the team, and Marshon Lattimore, who's finally healthy.
Redshirt freshman running back Mike Weber is looking like a young Hyde in fall camp, using his bruising running style and strength to bulldoze his way to a starting role, and receiver Noah Brown is catching everything in sight.
Can those players make a similar leap and spring the Buckeyes toward another improbable playoff run?
"I see that potential," Meyer said last month, according to Rabinowitz.
All recruiting rankings and information courtesy of 247Sports.
David Regimbal is the lead Ohio State football writer for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Twitter @davidreg412.