Buckeyes center Seth McLaughlin loses black stripe
COLUMBUS — Ohio State center Seth McLaughlin shed his black stripe on Saturday after Student Appreciation Day inside the Woody Hayes Athletic Center.
The multi-year starter at Alabama transferred to Ohio State to become a part of an offensive line that has championship potential. With the black stripe off, he’s officially a member of the Buckeyes football program.
McLaughlin had issues snapping last year for the Crimson Tide, but he and the Buckeyes believe those problems are in the past.
More on McLaughlin’s past snapping issues, why they’re in past
McLaughlin, meanwhile, also struggled during his second year as the Crimson Tide starter last year. After a promising first year snapping to Heisman Trophy winner Bryce Young, McLaughlin and Jalen Milroe couldn’t seem to forge a chemistry that made for clean center-to-quarterback exchanges.
It was puzzling for McLaughlin, who has played center since grade school and last year developed errant snaps in his down-to-down play. McLaughlin wore a lot of blame for some of the issues on offense for Alabama last fall, especially with his off-center snaps in the Rose Bowl loss to Michigan.
“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 earlier this winter. “And I kind of just sat down and thought about, ‘Where can 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.”
Were those snaps the fault of McLaughlin? Does blame lie on Milroe? Does that even matter now? McLaughlin transferred for a fresh start, and Ohio State was happy to accept the talented, multi-year Alabama starter into the program.
He maintains that snapping issues are far behind him.
“There’s a lot that goes into it,” McLaughlin said. “Once you have a bad one, you kind of start thinking about, ‘OK, I gotta get this right.’ I don’t think I was really struggling from a mental standpoint. It was just a matter of, it would just happen. I can’t really explain what was going on and kind of what went into it.
“But that’s really in the past, and I’m looking at moving forward from that.”
