By Andrew Linnehan

Laurinaitis only had 24 tackles through OSU's first 6 games

 

I stood on the sidelines of the Wisconsin-Ohio State game eager to see some of college football’s most highly touted playmakers buzz all over the gridiron. For the most part, I wasn’t disappointed.

Terrelle Pryor looked like what I imagine Vince Young did at Texas; A 6′6″, 235-pound freak of an athlete that looks like a gazelle in the open field. PJ Hill and Beanie Wells, both teams’ respective running backs, seeked out contact and looked like Cadillacs plowing into opposing defenders. But James Laurinaitis, Ohio State’s Senior linebacker who was a frontrunner for the Biletnikoff going into this season, was egregiously missing.

I thought this guy was the same guy that was mentioned in pre-season Heisman talk, that hit harder than hard. A guy who was feared by anyone carrying the pigskin within a five-mile radius of where he resided. But as I watched closely for him to do something, nothing ever happened. He was non-existant in one of Ohio State’s biggest games in his senior season.

The Wisconsin game wasn’t a statistic anomaly for Laurinaitis this year. Through six games, the middle linebacker has accrued merely 24 solo tackles, only one tackle-for-loss, only one sack, only one pass deflection, and only one interception.

This was supposed to be the next guy in a long tradition of linebacker phenoms from the Big Ten. Chad Greenway, A.J. Hawk, Paul Posluzny, even Northwestern’s Tim McGarigle led the nation in tackles a few years ago. Laurinaitis was supposed to do that this year. Even if he didn’t rack up gaudy tackle figures, he was supposed to be a disrupter, one who wreaked havoc in opposing backfields and on opposing quarterbacks.

In the OSU press conference after the Bucks’ big win at Camp Randall, Laurinaitis told reporters that this team still has a chance to get back into the National Championship discussion. That sort of talk is perfectly accurate, but the scarlett and gray will need their senior defensive leader to start walking the walk for them.