For the second year in a row, Jayden Fielding enters the College Football Playoff looking to bounce back from a costly miss in Ohio State’s final game before the CFP.
In 2024, Fielding entered the CFP having missed two field goals in Ohio State’s 13-10 loss to Michigan. He came up short on his only field goal attempt in Ohio State’s first-round CFP win over Tennessee, a 56-yard kick in cold weather that would have been tough for any kicker, but made all four of his field goal attempts in Ohio State’s final three playoff games, including a game-clinching 33-yard field goal in the final minute of the Buckeyes’ national championship win over Notre Dame.
Fielding enters Ohio State’s first CFP game this season, a quarterfinal at the Cotton Bowl vs. Miami, coming off a 27-yard field goal miss against Indiana in the Big Ten Championship Game, a game the Buckeyes also lost 13-10. And the harassment he’s faced for that miss has been even more severe than the backlash he faced after the loss to Michigan a year ago.
During Cotton Bowl media day on Monday, Fielding told Eleven Warriors that his phone number and home address were leaked after the Big Ten Championship Game. He received threatening messages that prompted investigations from the Ohio State Police Department.
“I'd say it was probably worse this year than last year,” Fielding said. “I was constantly in contact with the OSU Police Department for my safety because they were worried about me and my mom was worried about me. They were always in constant contact with me, making sure I was all right.”
Fielding understands, though, that criticism comes with the territory of being a kicker for a high-profile football team. While the harassment he faced after the Big Ten Championship Game went further than anything anyone should ever have to face over failing to make a play in a football game, he also knows the best way to silence his critics is to deliver once again in this year’s CFP.
“There's always consequences for your actions. I gotta do my job, and it wouldn't be a problem,” Fielding said. “So I know that, and it makes it a little bit easier to deal with that when you go out to practice every day and you go out there and make kicks.”
While a 27-yard kick is one that an Ohio State kicker will always be expected to make, the kick came at a challenging angle, with Fielding having to kick back across his body from inside the right hash. Fielding said improper technique resulted in him pulling the ball too far left.
“Toe came up and just swung across a little bit,” Fielding said. “Those angles are a little tough for me. It’s pretty sharp from that close, so I think I just overcompensated.”
No one felt worse about the miss than Fielding, whose dismay was evident immediately as he buried his head in his hands after the kick sailed left of the goalpost. But Fielding’s trying not to dwell on the miss anymore as he turns his focus forward to the CFP.
“Obviously disappointed. You always want to come through for your team,” Fielding said. “But I didn't that day, and I gotta bounce back and do my job in the playoffs.”
Jayden Fielding buried his head in his hands after missing what would have been a 27-yard field goal in the fourth quarter of the Big Ten Championship Game. (Photo: Adam Cairns/Columbus Dispatch/USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images)
Before his miss vs. Indiana, Fielding had made 15 of 18 field goal attempts this season. For his career, Fielding has made more than 80 percent of his field goal attempts (45 of 56) and all but one of his 177 extra point attempts. That track record gives him confidence that he will bounce back when called upon in the playoff.
“I have a lot of confidence,” Fielding said. “I've played for four years and I have really good stats over four years. I've always had confidence in myself, and that's not stopping me.”
Most of Fielding’s makes have come in situations where Ohio State already had comfortable leads, so his misses against Indiana this year and Michigan last year leave in question whether the Buckeyes can count on him if they need him to make a clutch kick with the game on the line. It’s impossible to fully simulate the pressure that comes with those situations until those situations actually arise, but Fielding feels like he’s been able to build momentum for himself with his performance in practice over the last few weeks.
“You just try and create as much pressure in your own head as you can, and I think Coach Day helps me with that a lot, too. He's always behind me yelling at practice, and he's more intimidating than any crowd could ever be, to me at least,” Fielding said.
It also helps that Fielding has proven he can deliver on college football’s biggest stage with his two made field goals in last year’s national championship game, including a 46-yard kick.
“It's always in the back of your mind,” Fielding said. “You're like, ‘I've done this before, I can go do it again.’”
“I've played for four years and I have really good stats over four years. I've always had confidence in myself, and that's not stopping me.”– Jayden Fielding on believing he’ll bounce back from his Big Ten Championship Game miss
Perhaps most helpful of all, Fielding’s Ohio State coaches and teammates have rallied their support behind him as he’s faced backlash over the last few weeks. Numerous Ohio State players said after the Big Ten Championship Game that Fielding shouldn’t be blamed for the Buckeyes’ loss, noting that it’s a team game and that they shouldn’t have put him in that position where they needed his kick to win the game.
“There's more plays the defense could have made, there's more plays the offense could have made, more plays on special teams we could have made,” Ohio State defensive end Caden Curry said after the Big Ten Championship Game. “I mean, there's not just one person that defines a game, so nothing's wrong with Jayden.”
While Ryan Day hasn’t excused the miss, he’s also expressed that the Buckeyes still believe in Fielding and that Fielding wouldn’t still be Ohio State’s kicker if they didn’t trust him to make his kicks going forward.
“It's like everybody else: If you do your job, everybody does their job – we talk about 10 units doing their job – then we feel like we're going to win every game we play. When you don't do your job, then you're coming up short, then you've got to get that fixed as well,” Day said earlier this month. “There's a reason why we put him in there. We're not putting guys in the game that we don't believe in. So once we put you in the game, we believe that you're going to do your job, and it's your job to make sure that that gets done. So just like everybody else, he's got to take a hard look at it and make sure that everything that he's doing is on point.”
Fielding is grateful for the Buckeyes’ support, and that makes him all the more motivated to do what the Buckeyes need him to do to beat Miami and make another national championship run.
“These guys, ever since I've been here, they've always been supporting me, so they just continue doing that and they know what's going to go on,” Fielding said.
