Ohio State transfer offensive lineman Seth McLaughlin has had a stellar college career thus far, starting for his former team, Alabama, 25 times over the last few seasons. But unfortunately for the fifth-year player, perhaps most of his recognition comes from miscues in the Rose Bowl this past season.
McLaughlin, after little to no trouble with snapping over the course of his career, suddenly struggled snapping the ball to quarterback Jalen Milroe in the eventual Rose Bowl loss to Michigan, and even delivered a low snap on the final play of the game in overtime that ultimately led to the Wolverine defense bringing down Milroe short of the goal line on fourth down.
“Once you have a bad one you start thinking about, ‘OK, I’ve got to get this right.’ I don’t think I was struggling from a mental standpoint, it was more a matter of, it would just happen,” McLaughlin said on Tuesday. “I can’t really explain what was going on and what went into it, but that’s really in the past and I’m looking on moving forward from that.”
It was an unusual issue for McLaughlin, who had previously had no issues with snapping the football. In fact, he had been doing so since he was 7 years old, with thousands upon thousands of snaps under his belt by the time this last season concluded. But those issues late in the season had him questioning his path forward that ultimately landed him at Ohio State.
“When you go through something like that, you kind of have to sit down and look at yourself and be like, ‘OK, who am I as a person, what am I,’” McLaughlin said. “And I sat down and thought about, ‘Where do I go from here?’ I can’t control what happened in the past. I can’t control what happened in that game, I can’t control the public reaction to that.
“But I’m here now, I’m in a great place to continue my development and play for an incredible program, play for incredible coaches. I’m very positive. I have no negative feelings about what happened.”
McLaughlin said he is prepared to play any position at Ohio State, even if the expectation is that he will line up at center in competition with redshirt sophomore Carson Hinzman. But that level of competition is something he embraced at Alabama, and something he is looking forward to taking on in a new environment – and maybe a needed change of scenery – at Ohio State.
“Ohio State is one of the greatest programs in college football,” McLaughlin said. “Coming from a place like Alabama, I thought I wanted to go to another similar place that’s always competing to win championships and has great coaching and great development.”
