Remember this?
Braxton Miller dove, caught, spun and shredded the Virginia Tech defense for 140 total yards and two touchdowns on eight touches to snatch Big Ten Offensive Player of the Week honors in Ohio State's 42-24 season opening victory at Virginia Tech on Labor Day.
He was the talk of college football once again after a more than year hiatus, missing Ohio State's 2014 national championship season after undergoing his second surgery in eight months to repair a torn labrum. Even one national columnist — known for being a Buckeye egotist — wrote after the Virginia Tech game asking who would turn into the team's best Heisman Trophy candidate by the end of the year. He, too, even leaned toward Miller being the biggest possibility.
Since then? Miller's touched the ball 20 times for 118 total yards from scrimmage with no touchdowns in Ohio State's first three home games — wins against Hawai'i, Northern Illinois and Western Michigan.
Miller's most recent effort resulted in just 38 total yards on six touches in Ohio State's 38-12 victory Saturday against the Broncos. He got the ball on direct snaps, short passes out of the backfield and even some down the field, though he dropped one.
Why can't the Buckeyes figure out how to best use the only man on their roster who owns a Silver Football?
"(We're) trying to give him the ball," Ohio State head coach Urban Meyer said. "It's an effort to try — we're releasing him out of the backfield. We're flipping him the ball, lining him up with the quarterback, and we're just not having the big hits right now and we will."
There were two big hits against the Hokies three weeks ago, one coming when Miller beat a defender down the field and tiptoed the sideline to the end zone and the other on a direct snap where he spun into SportsCenter's next week of scheduled programming.
"He's an important piece to the offense because his skill set fits our offense and he can do a lot of things," Ohio State offensive coordinator Ed Warinner said Saturday.
The Buckeyes sent direct snaps to Miller hands eight times in its home opener against Hawai'i, but since have tried to mix in other ways to get him the ball. He's dropped a few of the snaps, too, looking a bit uncomfortable in his new role within the offense.
"I don't think he's getting frustrated, in my personal opinion. I don't think it's the Wildcat, mainly because I'm a great receiver," quarterback Cardale Jones said Saturday. "He feels back at home when he's being center. Just trying to get back used to doing different things when you're in the box than when you're out wide at receiver."
Jones usually lumbers out to wide receiver when Miller lines up in the shotgun, the reason for his joke. At times it might feel like Meyer elects to do that at odd times throughout the course of a successful drive, and it doesn't always end in positive plays whether Miller runs the ball or flips it to a teammate.
It's all different. It's all new.
"I don't necessarily think it's him. Although I do think — did he drop one today? Just the concentration," Meyer said. "It's not lack of effort. It's not attitude. It's great. And he had a good week in practice. We'll keep pushing."
Miller's bought into his new role, stepping away from the position he loves so dearly in order to try to help his team win games. His teammates and coaches speak often about how appreciative they are he's doing so since he was the focal point of Ohio State's offense in Meyer's first two seasons.
"When you have a guy like Braxton and he's made the commitment to this program to stay another year and help us in any role possible, we're trying to find ways to use him to help us win games and help him," Warinner said.
On a day the offense took a major step forward from everything to Jones throwing the ball in addition to Ezekiel Elliott and the offensive line looking more like they did at the end of 2014, Miller was largely silent.
Lucky for Ohio State, eight regular season games remain on the schedule, starting with Saturday's Big Ten opener at Indiana. There's still time to figure out how to best use Miller.
"He's a hard worker, too and a good kid and very team-oriented," Warinner said. "We're just trying to find ways that he can help us make plays."
