Beyond the obvious physical tests, players at the NFL Combine are grilled by teams in interviews to get a sense of their mental fortitude and how they have reacted or would react to certain situations. That includes asking some college players to relive their worst defeats.
That means Ohio State players are being asked all about their 55-24 loss at Iowa last November, a game that ultimately kept them from the College Football Playoff.
“Every NFL team asks me about the Iowa game,” former Buckeye defensive lineman Jalyn Holmes said Saturday, via Scott Dochterman of Land of 10. “‘What happened?’
“I just look at them and I don’t know what happened. I’m still trying to find those answers out. They played the best game of their life. That’s all it is. We didn’t come to play that day. They came to play. I feel they played the best game of their life, and the score showed.”
Defensive end Sam Hubbard tried to take a silver lining-based approach to the questioning.
“It’s a tough subject and something you’ve got to handle head on because we didn’t do good enough that day,” Hubbard said. “The thing I always like to look at is the resiliency of our team and the leadership we had to come back and win the next week.”
Reliving one of the worst losses of their lives probably isn’t something that thrills Buckeye players, but it had to be done at some point. Maybe they’d have preferred a staring contest.
