Ohio State: Isaiah Prince emerged as leader, blocker Buckeyes needed

COLUMBUS — The final pages of Ohio State’s football season haven’t been written yet, and the ending hasn’t arrived for Isaiah Prince’s up-and-down career.

But it feels like the familiar tale of a browbeaten antihero, struggling to figure out an identity. There are trial and tribulations, there are big moments that reveal the depth of his character and moments when it feels like he’s fallen too far to get back up.

That was West Lafayette, Ind. on Oct. 20. That was a hapless, rudderless football team getting shellacked by Purdue 49-20.

It’s just after that moment usually in works of fiction where somehow, someway, things get pulled together and the day gets saved. Ironically that moment may have also come at Ross-Ade Stadium, just moments after the final whistle had been blown on the blowout. It was in that moment, right before Ohio State retreated into a broom closet dressed up as a locker room, that strength coach Mickey Marotti pulled Prince aside before the 6-foot-7, 315-pound lineman ducked into the room himself.

What exactly was said that night at Purdue? That’s private in the Ohio State locker room, but they appear to have resonated based on the way the Buckeyes bounced back to win the Big Ten East Division with Prince elevating his own game along the way, capping it with an all-time beatdown of rival Michigan on Saturday at the Horseshoe.

“It was about a group as a whole, facing so much criticism and going through so much adversity,” he said. “We came out, we had a chip on our shoulder, we knew we love each other. It’s a brotherhood — and we do it for one another.”

The senior captain has had an inconsistent career since stepping into the starting lineup in 2016. He’s always been immensely talented, but until that night in western Indiana, he’d found safe harbor in a role that allowed him to avoid the spotlight that shines on leaders. He was comfortable in the large shadow cast by J.T. Barrett and Billy Price and a host of others in the last few seasons.

The shadow is gone, and it was time for Prince to step into the light and step up for his Buckeyes.

“Isaiah Prince said some words to us, I’m not going to get into specifics, but similar to what Billy was saying last year,” co-captain Terry McLaurin said. “When it’s coming from your offensive linemen, that’s the heartbeat of our team.

“I just hope everybody was in there listening, and [thinking about] how we’re going to get better from this.”

For most of his career, it was Prince who needed to get better. Two years ago, almost to the day, he was brutalized as Michigan sacked J.T. Barrett eight times. That performance was actually better than his game at Penn State earlier in the year, where he surrendered 15 quarterback pressures alone in a stunning loss.

Prince has gotten better, though. And following his lead, the Buckeyes have too.

Sure, there was the debacle in the first quarter at Michigan State, but a dominant line reemerged in the second half in East Lansing and helped turn the game around. At Maryland, Ohio State erupted for almost 700 yards of offense, racking up chunks of yardage on the ground and through the air. There seemed to be almost audible click in the offense, and to beat the country’s top-ranked defense, there’d have to be.

What Isaiah Prince and his cohorts did to the vaunted Michigan defensive line was truly stunning. The Wolverines had averaged just under three sacks a game this season, menacing quarterbacks with a ferocious pass rush from all three levels of their defense. Michigan never came close to touching Ohio State’s Dwayne Haskins, who threw from a perfect pocket all afternoon, never being sacked or really even hurried. It was a clean slate for an oft-maligned unit, a unit that heard all week long how their former coach had crafted a better unit now as an assistant at Michigan.

For Prince and the Buckeyes, it was a salve on what has been a sore of epic proportions known as the 2018 football season.

And there’s a sense of relief, no doubt. The Buckeyes have struggled all season to get to the level of play that is expected from them. On Saturday, when they had to be, they were flawless.

Don’t tell that to Prince, though. His newfound role as a vocal leader for Ohio State won’t let him get complacent.

“It definitely feels good to end all the criticism, to show people it’s not what it was,” he said. “There’s always room for improvement. We had three-and-outs. We had a really good game on offense, credit to everybody on the offense playing as hard as they did, but we’re never going to say we played a perfect game.

“There’s always room for improvement.”

And there are still pages left for Prince and the Buckeyes to find it.