A notable football injury was revealed on Tuesday when senior kicker Jayden Fielding told the media that he had played through most of the 2024 season with a torn hip abductor in his right leg.
“I was going through a little bit of an injury bug. I ended up tearing one of my abductors in my (right hip),” Fielding said. “Didn’t make it too easy trying to kick in those games, but I did my best to help the team out.”
Fielding said that he first suffered the injury during the Buckeyes’ Week 3 game against Marshall, where he memorably booted three straight kickoffs out of bounds for penalties before being benched in favor of the now-departed Austin Synder. Head coach Ryan Day said around that time that he was not aware that Fielding was going through an injury and wanted him to better communicate with him, even meeting with him one-on-one to discuss what had transpired.
Day would ultimately give Fielding his job back that next week against Michigan State and for the remainder of the season, but according to the kicker the pain from the injury never went away. This caused him to search for different ways he could play through the injury by going through “trial and error,” which he thinks may have led to some of his struggles down the stretch of the regular season.
Fielding most notably struggled in Ohio State’s 13-10 loss to Michigan last November, missing two kicks from 38 yards in or fewer.
Despite this forgettable game, Fielding still ultimately produced when it mattered most in the College Football Playoff, making each of his 19 extra points and four of his five field goal attempts in those four games, including a 33-yarder late in the fourth quarter of the national championship game against Notre Dame to seal the 31-23 win.
Fielding said he finally figured out how to kick through his injury during the team’s blowout win in the Rose Bowl, when he drilled a 46-yarder through the uprights early in the second quarter.
“A lot of the pressure that was coming towards me in practice and from the media, it was all kind of compiling, and I had to do something about it. So I had to figure it out,” Fielding said.
Heading into this season, though, Fielding said he is fully recovered from his injury and is feeling as confident as ever, changes that are evident in the way he has been kicking as of late.
“I’m really healthy right now. I feel great,” Fielding said. “This is probably the best I’ve felt in eight or nine months.”
“The contact sounds the same, but you can just tell with the ball flight that it goes a lot further and sounds a lot more pure off my foot.”
