Meet the 1st Pick of the 2016 NFL Draft, Ohio State's Joey Bosa

COLUMBUS, Ohio — The first round of the NFL draft came and went on Thursday without a player from college football's national champion being selected for the first time since 2003.

But make no mistake, it won't be long before Ohio State adds another first-rounder to its resume.

Joey Bosa would have been a lock to be selected with one of the first 32 picks on Thursday, if not for one small issue: He's only a sophomore. But in just two years, the Buckeyes defensive end has shown enough to already have WalterFootball.com projecting him as the player who will be selected with the first overall pick of the 2016 draft.

“I obviously hear about it and see it around," Bosa said of the draft chatter that has seemingly surrounded him since he was midway through his freshman year. "But it doesn't really get to my head."

If recent history is any indication, it may not even take that much.

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Unlike Bosa, Jadeveon Clowney found himself facing the expectations of being a No. 1 overall pick dating all the way back to his days as a 5-star prospect in Rock Hill, South Carolina. Winding up just down the road at the University of South Carolina, everything seemed to be going according to plan as Clowney tallied 13 sacks and 23.5 tackles for loss in his sophomore season in 2012.

Unsurprisingly, most mock drafts penciled the 6'6", 274-pounder to be taken first overall as soon as he became draft-eligible in 2014.

But as Clowney's junior campaign unfolded, he hardly looked like a player capable of being the face of a franchise. Questions arose as to whether he was playing it safe to protect his draft stock, as he tallied just three sacks while appearing in 11 games for the Gamecocks.

Nevertheless, when the Houston Texans took the podium last May, it was Clowney they selected with the draft's first pick.

Bosa isn't the physical freak that Clowney is—although he's not far off either—but when it comes to production, he's actually done more than the 2012 All-American at this point in their respective careers. In two seasons, Bosa has recorded 99 tackles, 21 sacks and 34.5 tackles for loss, and he was named a consensus All-American in 2014.

Player	Tackles	Tackles For Loss	Sacks
Clowney	90	35.5	21
Bosa	99	34.5	21

With the premium that's placed on getting to the quarterback in the NFL, it's no surprise that teams have already been salivating over the Buckeyes' 6'6", 275-pound defensive end.

It's not a secret around the Ohio State facility that 2015 will be Bosa's last season in Columbus either, but Buckeyes defensive line coach Larry Johnson insists his star player won't fall victim to the same junior year slump Clowney did when he was facing similar circumstances.

“That’s not what’s on his mind right now," Johnson said. "Joey Bosa wants to be a great player, and he knows to do that he’s got to start here. It starts every day at practice. He’s not looking to the NFL. He knows he’s got to get it done here."

There might not be a coach in the country who knows more about first-round defensive linemen than Johnson, who was responsible for helping develop six such players during his time as an assistant at Penn State.

Johnson declined to reveal where Bosa ranks among the likes of Courtney Brown and Tamba Hali in terms of talent, but Urban Meyer—who has a history of his own with defensive linemen dating back to his days at Florida—has said that he would already consider putting Bosa at the top of his list.

“Could be as good a defensive linemen I've ever coached," Meyer told Jeremy Fowler at CBSSports.com last spring. "He can be as good as there is.”

If that was before Bosa's monster 2014 campaign, then one can only imagine what the Ohio State head coach now thinks of the Fort Lauderdale, Florida, native. Bosa, for his part, insists he can get even better, which is obviously a scary thought for opposing offenses.

"I see that plays could just fall into my lap, and as long as I’m doing my job, I could make even more plays," Bosa said of his offseason film sessions. "I’d see five or six sacks that I could have had but I went inside instead of outside or something like that."

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Having initially arrived at Ohio State a a shy kid, award show circuits and the spotlight of the first-ever College Football Playoff have made Bosa media savvy, so it shouldn't come as a surprise that he's already come up with the right answers about his approach to his junior season.

But until he hits the field next fall, questions will remain as to whether he'll take the same path as Clowney, knowing the millions of dollars that an injury-free season would guarantee.

“It will never happen. It will never happen,” Johnson insists. "Because he wants to be great."

With the way NFL teams are already looking at him, you could argue that he already is. And while his draft placement will ultimately be determined by who winds up with the No. 1 overall pick a year from now, there's a reason why he's already leading the discussion of next year's top prospects.

"I'm not really thinking about it much," Bosa claims. "I have my goals set, and it’s just to get better and be a great team again this year. I feel like if I go out and work every day, everything will fall into place.”

As Clowney showed last year, regardless of what happens for Bosa in 2015, that may have already happened.

Ben Axelrod is Bleacher Report's Big Ten Lead Writer. You can follow him on Twitter @BenAxelrod. Unless noted otherwise, all quotes were obtained firsthand. All statistics courtesy of CFBStats.com. Recruiting rankings courtesy of 247Sports.