In total<\/a>, he is\/was a finalist for the Lott IMPACT Trophy, Nagurski Award, Bednarik Award, and Thorpe Award. Last year, he was a finalist for the Bednarik Award in addition to the Thorpe Award.<\/p>\nHe began his career at Alabama as a five-star recruit. From the jump, he was dominant. Ultimately, he led the Crimson Tide with 107 tackles, three-and-a-half tackles for loss, four pass breakups, a forced fumble, a fumble recovery, and two interceptions. This earned him the honors of Freshman of The Year. However, with Nick Saban’s retirement, he jumped in the portal and landed at Ohio State.<\/p>\n
Last year, he added 82 tackles, seven-and-a-half tackles for loss, half of a sack, six pass breakups, and two interceptions. He was named a unanimous All-American while leading the Buckeyes to a national championship.<\/p>\n
This year, his counting stats took a slight dip thanks to the play of the Buckeye front seven. In total, heading into the CFP, Downs has 60 tackles, five tackles for loss, a sack, two pass breakups, and two interceptions.<\/p>\n
He was also awarded the Defensive Player of the Year Award in the Big Ten.<\/p>\n
Main Photo: Adam Cairns\/Columbus Dispatch \/ USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
After missing out on the Jim Thorpe Award as a finalist last year, Caleb Downs was picked as this year’s winner.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4051,"featured_media":70154,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[35609,2,17],"tags":[34457,493,274,35596,35816,35073],"class_list":["post-83631","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ohio-state-buckeyes","category-featured","category-news","tag-antoine-winfield","tag-awards","tag-jim-thorpe-award","tag-leonard-moore","tag-malcom-jenkins","tag-mansoor-delane"],"modified_by":"Tony Siracusa, CFB Managing Editor","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83631","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4051"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=83631"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83631\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":83840,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83631\/revisions\/83840"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/70154"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=83631"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=83631"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=83631"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}