Only one man on Ohio State’s original starting offensive line for the 2024 season remained an every-snap player at the same position for the entire season.
Josh Simmons and Seth McLaughlin suffered season-ending injuries, Donovan Jackson was forced to slide from left guard to left tackle (where he still excelled) and right guard Tegra Tshabola rolled with Austin Sierveld throughout the campaign, especially during the Buckeyes’ four-game College Football Playoff run.
But the true stalwart at his spot among Ohio State’s slobs was right tackle Josh Fryar, and the Buckeyes’ national championship victory was the payoff of an arduous five-year career for the Indiana product.
It hit him when he started smoking a cigar in the Buckeyes’ locker room after their College Football Playoff national championship victory.
“Sweet victory,” Fryar said of the tobacco roll’s taste. “Sweet, sweet victory. All the blood, sweat, tears for five years. It’s unbelievable.”
Fryar’s college football career started in a time of great adversity for the sport.
The Beech Grove, Indiana, product was an unheralded three-star prospect in Ohio State’s recruiting class of 2020, arriving during the COVID-19 pandemic and experiencing all the tribulations it brought his team while redshirting. Then, in 2021, he experienced some personal tribulations when he tore his ACL during warmups before a game against Michigan.
Fryar missed all of 2022 spring practice but otherwise attacked rehab well, then returned with a goal for his redshirt sophomore season.
“I know for me, my mindset is to play,” Fryar said during preseason camp in 2022. “I want to play. I don't want to sit back and wait.”
Fryar did, in fact, play in 2022. He received reps as Ohio State’s sixth offensive lineman in the Buckeyes’ ‘Bison’ package and as a general backup for most of the season, then made his first career start at right tackle in Week 11 against Indiana, filling in for a briefly injured Dawand Jones. When Enokk Vimahi struggled out of the gates against Michigan two weeks later, Fryar took his place at right guard and played 62 snaps in a loss.
Sticking at right tackle entering 2023, Fryar started all 13 games for the Buckeyes. But the season didn’t go as planned. Ohio State closed the campaign with losses to Michigan and Missouri as the Buckeyes’ offensive line struggled, particularly vs. the Tigers in the Cotton Bowl. Fryar gave up five sacks on the year.
Josh Fryar played 62 snaps at guard for Ohio State in the 2022 Michigan game.
Fryar’s performance that season did not live up to his standards, as he put it during an interview ahead of the 2024 campaign. But no player deserves the harassment he and those close to him had to put up with following 2023.
“Last year was a learning curve for me starting,” Fryar said in May 2024. “It’s kind of crazy to see the response you get from people when you have a bad season, I guess you could say. The (opposing) defensive ends (giving you some issues), everyone trying to talk to you, saying you suck, you’re the worst offensive tackle, commenting on my girlfriend’s posts and it’s Ohio State fans. It’s crazy to see, but at the same time, I understand their passion for us to win.”
Read more about "The Greatest Run in College Football History," the story of Ohio State's dominant run to the national championship.
Same as with his injury, he attacked it in the offseason. He shed weight and gained athleticism to help deal with some of the speedy edge rushers who gave him fits in 2023. He built on his run blocking, too, which had always been a strength.
“We see Josh making a lot of progress,” Ryan Day said in June 2024. “He's had another really good June, another good offseason. We felt like the spring, he did a nice job there. So we feel like there's just been a lot of progress made. I think coming off of last year, he built some confidence. And then he knows he can do it.”
Fryar allowed just one sack in 2024, per Pro Football Focus. He was the mainstay piece of an offensive line that endured a roller coaster season. The front five dominated the first half of the season before Simmons’ season-ender in the first half against Oregon in Week 7. The Buckeyes struggled to move the ball in the second half of that game and against Nebraska in the next one, but Jackson slid out to left tackle as Carson Hinzman plugged in at left guard at No. 3 Penn State and the unit had a season-defining performance in the win.
Season-defining until the worst loss of the Day era, anyway. Ohio State failed to gain much push in its final two regular-season games following McLaughlin’s injury, and Michigan defensive tackles Mason Graham and Kenneth Grant took over as the Wolverines won The Game for the fourth year in a row, 13-10, despite entering the Shoe as a three-score underdog.
From the depths of that despair, the Buckeyes found their best football. They trounced Tennessee then Oregon in a revenge game at the Rose Bowl, scraped by Texas in a game that was tied in the fourth quarter and won the national championship over Notre Dame.
The offensive line had many memorable moments. Ohio State averaged 4.9 yards per carry against four of college football’s best defenses in the CFP, and paved the way for a 13-play, 88-yard drive in the fourth quarter against Texas to take a 21-14 lead in an eventual 28-14 victory.
“All the adversity we’ve been through,” Fryar said after the national title win, pausing a while as a wave of emotion washed over him. “They counted us all out after the team up north loss. And we just said, ‘We’re gonna stick together.’ Through injuries, through everything – especially injuries – it’s amazing what this offensive line has done.”
“We just said, ‘We’re gonna stick together.’ Through injuries, through everything – especially injuries – it’s amazing what this offensive line has done.”– Josh Fryar
Fryar himself was injured for the duration of Ohio State’s CFP run, a lower-body ailment that pained him every step. But he gutted it out for the love of his teammates, he said. Amid the cigar smoke in the Buckeyes’ locker room after they beat the Fighting Irish, Hinzman interrupted an interview with Fryar and made it clear his teammates love him back.
“I’m gonna stop you right there. This dude, big 7-0 (Fryar) the bear, is the nastiest, stinkiest, dirtiest (expletive) dog I’ve ever met in my whole life,” Hinzman yelled with an emphatic growl. “He’s a (expletive) champ. A national champ. A national (expletive) champ. And he’ll be a national champ forever.”
“I’m gonna interrupt him again,” Fryar said as he hopped back on the mic. “Big 75, Carson Hinzman, the things he’s done this season, the adversity he’s gone through, it makes him a stronger person and I know for a fact in my heart, next season when he comes up he’s going to be the best center in college football. I know that in my heart.”
“They (expletive) wrote him off, but he didn’t (expletive) write back,” right guard Tegra Tshabola chimed in.
Injury, harassment, heartbreak, all of Fryar’s and all of Ohio State’s adversity made the national title triumph that much more fulfilling.
“Way sweeter now,” Fryar said. “Just all the hardships and just thinking, when is this going to end? When is the misery going to end? It ended now. It ended during the playoffs. We were just playing free.”
Fryar closed his career with 29 consecutive starts at right tackle. He will forever be the stalwart of a national championship offensive line.
“We were close as a team, like super close, and I think that put the cherry on top of it,” Fryar said on March 26. “We were already brothers, but just to become even closer like that, it’s something that’s cool and no one can ever take that away from you. That’s the thing I relive in my head.”
