Ohio State defensive tackle Mike Hall Jr. accepts invitation to play in Senior Bowl
COLUMBUS — This is the first year the Reese’s Senior Bowl is allowing draft-eligible underclassmen to participate in the pre-draft all-star game. That opened the door for Ohio State defensive tackle Mike Hall Jr., a redshirt sophomore who accepted his invitation Wednesday.
Hall declared for this year’s NFL Draft the day after Ohio State suffered its Cotton Bowl loss to Missouri. He did so after spending three years with the Buckeyes.
Now, he’s the third Ohio State player to accept an invitation to this year’s Senior Bowl, joining linebacker Tommy Eichenberg and safety Josh Proctor.
Hall is coming off the most complete season of his career. He mounted a personal-best 24 total tackles with a pair of tackles for loss, including 1.5 sacks.
He also ranked third on the team with 29 pressures generated, according to Pro Football Focus. The only Buckeyes defenders ahead of him in that category were defensive ends J.T. Tuimoloau and Jack Sawyer.
Hall made 12 appearances for the second straight season, although this time he was in for 147 more defensive snaps than he played in 2023, a year in which he teased All-American potential before being clearly limited by a shoulder injury in the back half of the slate.
The Streetsboro, Ohio, native — once the On3 Industry Ranking’s No. 61 overall prospect in the 2021 recruiting class — finished this season on a high note. Of his 29 pressures, six came in the final two games, per PFF: three at Michigan in the regular season and three versus Missouri in the Cotton Bowl. In the process, he recorded seven total tackles, including a trio of solos.
Buckeyes fans got their first significant sample size of his pass rushing chops last season when he tied for the team lead with 4.5 sacks despite playing only 266 defensive snaps. In his first five games of the season, he registered 12 total pressures, according to PFF, plus all of his sacks. What’s more, three of those games came after his initial injury, including a 2.5-sack performance in fewer than 10 snaps at Michigan State.
Rather than shutting himself down for the rest of the season, Hall kept playing through the pain of his nagging shoulder injury but with a curtailed snap count.
The year before that, Hall enrolled at Ohio State in June 2021 before scattering 35 defensive snaps across four games, per PFF. He redshirted the season.
So, in total, Hall played 714 defensive snaps in his Buckeyes career. It was enough to give him an NFL Draft resume, one that the Senior Bowl has taken note of.
He’ll try to add to that resume in Mobile, Alabama, next month.
