It didn’t take long for Josh Proctor to realize he had suffered a serious injury in Ohio State’s second game of the 2021 season against Oregon.
After Proctor got rolled up on while he was making a tackle in the third quarter, Proctor attempted to stand up and realized he couldn’t move his leg. Then he looked down and saw his bone sticking out of his leg, revealing he had suffered a compound fracture.
“I just looked down and saw the bone, and then that was when I just dropped to the ground,” Proctor recalled.
That injury ended Proctor’s hopes of having a big senior season that would propel him to being selected in the 2022 NFL draft. Instead, Proctor is back with the Buckeyes for a fifth-year senior season after taking a redshirt last year.
Proctor said it was difficult to have to watch from the sidelines last season as Ohio State’s defense struggled without him. He felt like he could have made a difference if he had been on the field.
What wasn’t difficult was deciding to come back for another season with the Buckeyes, even though that wasn’t his original plan.
“I didn't go out like I wanted to,” Proctor said of last season. “I was unable to achieve what I wanted to achieve, being with the guys and just being here. So I feel like, it probably took me about a good month or two to really grasp that ’OK, I'm working my way back to another year and getting back into the swing of things.’”
Nearly seven months removed from the injury, Proctor says he is feeling 80-85 percent healthy now. He still isn’t participating in any full-contact drills in practice, but has gradually been able to work his way back into team drills after starting the spring doing only individual work.
Given the severity of the injury, Proctor feels like he’s ahead of schedule in his recovery although he isn’t a full participant in practice yet.
“I feel good. I feel like I'm able to get out there and run around, just getting my legs back under me,” Proctor said Friday.
That said, Proctor knows he will have ground to make up in preseason camp. Ohio State head coach Ryan Day and defensive coordinator Jim Knowles have both said they wish Proctor was available to do more this spring, and Proctor says it has been harder to learn the Buckeyes’ new defensive scheme without being able to take as many reps as he normally would in practice.
“It’s definitely a challenge,” Proctor said. “Before this week, I was probably getting like teach reps, so I would come down here and do teach period, just learning plays like that. But other than that, it’s just staying in the playbook as much as you can. But you never really know how it feels until you get out here on the field and everything is coming at you 100%.”
But Proctor says he is “completely confident” he will be back to his usual form by the start of the season.
“I’m just taking it day by day, step by step and making sure my body is ready,” Proctor said. “First getting back out there is kind of shaky, everything’s still moving fast again, just being back out there. Heart pumping a little bit. But it just takes some getting used to, getting those reps and calming yourself down, getting that confidence back day by day.”
While Proctor was playing free safety for the Buckeyes last season before his injury, he might end up playing a different role this season. With Ronnie Hickman now playing the adjuster position in Ohio State’s new scheme, Proctor could be in line to play bandit, the equivalent of a strong safety in Knowles’ defense.
Proctor expects to see snaps at both spots, and he doesn’t have a strong preference for which position he lines up at most. Either way, he believes Knowles’ philosophy of a “safety-driven defense” will give him plenty of opportunities to make plays.
“It jacks me up a lot,” Proctor said of Knowles’ defensive philosophy. “Because I know, just being back there, sometimes you can just be running around, sideline to sideline, not really get a lot of action. But knowing that it’s really a safety-driven defense, and you’re reading all these different keys, you’re always in the play. You’re never just going to be back there bored and just sitting there looking.”
With Kourt Williams also in the mix for considerable playing time at bandit, Proctor isn’t guaranteed to be a starter this season. But as long as he’s fully healthy, Proctor should see substantial playing time either way, as Knowles has indicated he expects Proctor to be an impact player.
“We need him. We want him,” Knowles said. “He's a guy that can really change the game. He's what we want at safety. So I just want him to get healthy.”
Day is also excited about having Proctor back on the field this fall.
“He's rangy. He can cover a lot of ground. He's extremely physical. I mean, he will absolutely get after you, whether it's receivers downfield or coming up and playing the run game blitzing,” Day said of what Proctor can bring to the defense. “He'll come downhill and he'll play physical. And he also has really good ball skills.
“When he's playing at his best, he’s all over the place. He plays with discipline, can really affect the game in a lot of areas. And he can get away with some things that maybe other guys can't. And that's what we're looking for out of him.”
