COLUMBUS, Ohio — Ohio State left guard Donovan Jackson was ready to play. His hamstring was not.
Jackson, the team’s most prominent returner along the offensive line, missed the first two weeks of the season with a hamstring issue. For a player with one year left at Ohio State, it wasn’t the easiest news to take, as he detailed on Wednesday night in his first time addressing the injury with the media.
“It was just the first two weeks of the season, yeah, I probably understand it probably wasn’t best for me to play,” Jackson said. “But it didn’t take back from my want to be out there.”
Jackson wasn’t available in part at the behest of coach Ryan Day, who stressed to him that it was best to miss the first two games and come back after the bye week than risk further injury. Especially against two Group of Five opponents, it made sense to let Jackson heal for what could end up being a season that stretches into late January.
“It’s just a frustrated player and a head coach that knows what’s best for him,” Jackson said. “I thought I was good to go, and a lot of people told me I wasn’t, and I was like, ‘What do you mean? I’m fine!’ Then coach Day had to talk me off a cliff a little bit. Just trying to protect me from myself.”
Despite not being a, “Happy camper” through two weeks, Jackson returned to the lineup against Marshall, ready to roll once again. He helped pave the way for running backs TreVeyon Henderson and Quinshon Judkins to rush for 249 yards between them.
Now, Ohio State will have its second game in a row with a full healthy and operational offensive line — the one it had imagined in the offseason.
”It’s the nature of the game, man,” Jackson said. “You over-stride a little bit one way and your hamstring goes another way. That’s kind of what happened to me. With those soft-tissue injuries, you can do all you can, but at the ned of the day, your body has to recover on hits own — which, to me, was the most frustrating part. I was probably living in the training room at one point trying to work it back.
