Ohio State Players Seeing “Championship or Bust” Urgency, “Incredible” Leadership in Summer Workouts

While McLaughlin is in his first year at Ohio State, the Buckeyes’ new center spent the last four years at Alabama, where he played for legendary coach Nick Saban. As a redshirting freshman, McLaughlin was part of Alabama’s 2020 national championship team.

Even so, McLaughlin said the level of discipline he’s seen from his Buckeye teammates during this year’s summer workouts led by Mickey Marotti and Ohio State’s strength and conditioning staff is the best he’s ever seen in his football career.

“Nobody complains about how hard we work,” McLaughlin told Eleven Warriors at the Special Skills Football Invitational on Friday. “With how hard we work, I would expect there would be some guys complaining, like, ‘Coach Mick's doing too much,’ or ‘We're working too hard.’ That's not it. That's just not around, and I love that about it.

“It's nothing new (from Alabama), but even then, hard work, there's going to be people that complain and stuff, but I just haven't experienced that here.”

Expectations in Columbus entering the 2024 season are perhaps as high as they’ve been since the Buckeyes entered 2015 as the defending national champions. Ohio State has more established stars than any other team in college football thanks to a multitude of seniors who chose to stay at OSU rather than enter the 2024 NFL draft – including running back TreVeyon Henderson, wide receiver Emeka Egbuka, guard Donovan Jackson, defensive ends Jack Sawyer and JT Tuimoloau, defensive tackles Tyleik Williams and Ty Hamilton, linebacker Cody Simon, cornerbacks Denzel Burke and Jordan Hancock and safety Lathan Ransom – as well as a talented group of offseason transfer additions including safety Caleb Downs, running back Quinshon Judkins, quarterback Will Howard and McLaughlin.

All the Buckeyes who stayed at Ohio State did so because they want to achieve the goals they’ve fallen short of so far in their OSU careers – beating Michigan, winning the Big Ten championship and winning the national championship – and Simon said that’s shown up in how hard they’ve worked leading up to the season.

“I know you've heard the notion of like it's championship or bust, but you feel that urgency around it,” Simon said. “Coming back is not the easiest thing. It's tough, hard work. But I think the guys and the leaders in our group, we really know what the job is and we've got to get it done. So we're excited.”

A championship-or-bust mentality leaves the Buckeyes with little margin for error to have a season that will be considered a true success, but junior linebacker C.J. Hicks said they’re embracing the high expectations.

“We don't really worry about the pressure, we just take everything a day at a time,” Hicks said. “We know what we have to do. We know what the expectation is. We know what the standard is. At the end of the day, you come to Ohio State to win. So that's the way we look at everything.”

Great way to start the work day with @OhioStateFB Guys are putting in that work pic.twitter.com/zmuxPfOjor

— Ross Bjork (@RossBjorkAD) July 10, 2024

With the Buckeyes’ alignment toward chasing those goals, Hicks believes this year’s team has a different level of camaraderie than it did the last two years.

“I feel like the team now is more together than it has ever been,” Hicks said. “A lot of people are taking a lot of ownership. A lot of people are stepping up. I feel like as a team, we're not young. We've been there. We know what it takes to get to where we wanna go. We've fallen short multiple times, but I feel like this team is prepared and ready for the season.”

McLaughlin believes the team’s leaders have set the tone and brought everyone else along with them.

“I just think the leadership on this team is incredible,” McLaughlin said. “There's a ton of people that could have had a lot of opportunities to go on and move on to the next level, and they came back. And that's been one of the main focuses is just trying to instill that passion in everybody else, and it's really rubbed off.”

“I feel like the team now is more together than it has ever been.”– C.J. Hicks on Ohio State’s team camaraderie

Tight end Gee Scott Jr., who’s one of those leaders entering his fifth year at Ohio State, says the Buckeyes recognize they have to put in the work all year long if they want to achieve their goals.

“We always have the mindset that if you want to be able to achieve good, you got to put the amount of work in to be able to do so,” Scott said.

With seven more weeks of preseason work to go before the Aug. 31 season opener against Akron, Howard believes the Buckeyes are making the progress they need to make to give themselves a chance to have a special season.

“We're really starting to come together as a team,” Howard said. “We've still got a ways to go, but we're on the right track.”

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