Harry Miller’s first season starting on Ohio State’s offensive line came with no shortage of difficult lessons.
He never quite got into a groove in five games as Ohio State’s starting left guard. He struggled with snapping the ball when he had to move back to center to fill in for Josh Myers at Michigan State. He was unable to attend the Sugar Bowl after testing positive for COVID-19, and he played through a labrum tear in his shoulder – which required him to undergo surgery this offseason – late in the season.
Miller also experienced the dark side of social media, where he received many negative comments, some of which went far beyond simple criticism of his play.
Yet Miller, a deep thinker who carries a 4.0 grade-point average at Ohio State and seamlessly weaves references to literature and history into interviews about football, believes all of those trials he had to face last season have made him stronger going into his junior year with the Buckeyes.
“There’s a great gift to having to do something very difficult that knocks you on your butt,” Miller said. “It was very isolating to have people tell you they hate you, people tell you to go kill yourself, people tell you to go switch universities. That’s a hard thing, but I think it’s a great gift to have that and know that other people would not have taken it, other people would have been very different with that, but it was a great gift to have that for me.
“To face public odium – it’s a difficult thing that is very terrible in most cases, but also a great gift, because not everybody gets to experience it. A lot of people are protected by anonymity, and they can say whatever they want to say in a very brutal fashion, but I think if you asked a lot of guys who play football, there’s a lot of mean things that are said to them, a lot of athletes deal with that. And that’s just the way the thing goes. So it’s a great gift to know that people love you, people care about you, people who do difficult things with you care about you no matter what.”
Going into the 2021 season, Miller is in line to be Ohio State’s starting center. Luke Wypler is also still vying for that job, but while Ohio State offensive line coach Greg Studrawa described the competition between them as “a hell of a battle,” he also said Tuesday that Miller would be the starter right now.
After Miller missed spring practices while recovering from his shoulder surgery, Studrawa likes what he’s seen from Miller so far in preseason camp.
“Harry’s as big and strong as he’s ever been,” Studrawa said.
That echoes what Ryan Day said about Miller at Big Ten Media Days, where he said Miller “had an unbelievable summer” and “really changed his body.” Miller said he didn’t let the shoulder surgery stop him from working as hard as he could this offseason.
“I have my lowest body fat since I’ve been here, and I think I lost 10 pounds of fat and gained nine pounds of muscle over the summer post-surgery, and I was able to do more pull-ups after getting a labrum surgery than before a surgery,” Miller said. “So I was really happy with that with upper-body strength, lower-body strength, speed and agility.”
Perhaps even more important to Miller’s 2021 success than his physical improvement, though, is how he’s grown through the experience of playing last year. While Miller was a dominant player in high school who has consistently drawn rave reviews for how he’s performed on the practice field, he realized last season that there was a big difference between playing at the end of blowout wins as a freshman and playing with the game on the line as a sophomore.
“I realized, especially like as a freshman playing center, you’re in low-stress environments because you’re playing in a blowout environment and there’s really little consequence,” Miller said. “So there’s less stressors, and so it’s easier to perform.”
“There’s a great gift to having to do something very difficult that knocks you on your butt.”– Harry Miller
Now that he’s had a full offseason to build off of what he learned last year and train himself to perform at his best in high-stress environments, and now has the opportunity to go through a full preseason practicing against Ohio State’s defensive line, he’s optimistic he’ll be ready for the challenges that come with being the Buckeyes’ starting center this year.
“I think a huge theme of my sophomore year is just it’s so hard, there’s so many things you don’t know that you don’t know, and that’s what learning is,” Miller said. “That’s what’s so good about being a sophomore that gets playing time is you have to learn so many things you didn’t even know you didn’t know. And we’re in camp and getting better reps and it’s a high-stress environment and so, I would say I’m doing that right now and I’m working that right now.”
Miller learned last year that it isn’t easy to be a starting offensive lineman at Ohio State, and he “learned that people can be really mean if you play poorly.” But he’s taking those lessons with him into this season, and regardless of whether his play leads to praise or criticism this year, he’s determined not to let the outside noise get into his head – citing lessons learned from a Roman emperor and a famous poet.
“Marcus Aurelius says ‘Look at how capricious all those clapping hands are,’ and the reality is, people place laurels on your head and say that you’re the best in the world but laurels rot and laurels wither and they get very old,” Miller said. “And again, there’s a great gift to being challenged and being insulted and like Walt Whitman said, ‘To struggle against great odds, face enemies undaunted to find yourself entirely alone with them and see how much one can stand.’”
