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Football
Improved Attitude is Catalyst to Improvement for Pryor
By Brandon Castel

COLUMBUS — He has not even begun his junior season at Ohio State, but already Terrelle Pryor is talking about next year.

Terrelle Pryor
Photo by Dan Harker

Based on the hype surrounding the 6-foot-6 quarterback when he came to Columbus back in 2008, some people might expect that talk to include references to the National Football League. 

Those people would be wrong.

“I want to leave a legacy here. That's my goal,” Pryor said Sunday during media day at Ohio Stadium.

“That's why I'll be here for four years.”

It was a bold claim from a player being touted as the preseason Offensive Player of the Year in the Big Ten for the second year in a row, not to mention a Heisman Trophy candidate heading into his junior season.

No one’s going to hold him to this. How could they? Pryor is hardly the first college star to make such a crucial statement without knowing how things will play out, and he would hardly be the last who didn’t follow through.

But this was a statement more deeply rooted in the way he began his career than the way he plans on finishing it.

“As a junior in high school everybody was praising me. Everybody was telling me how great I am,” said Pryor, who was a U.S. Army All-American and national high school player of the year at Jeanette, Pa.

“You lose your humbleness.”

It probably didn’t help that Pryor was handed the keys to Jim Tressel’s kingdom just four games into his rookie season. That was never the plan. Pryor was supposed to come in and learn under fifth-year senior Todd Boeckman. He was supposed to bide his time and earn his way onto the field like the rest of his new teammates.

But the Buckeyes were shamed on national television in a 35-3 beat-down at USC that could have been even worse. Boeckman was sacked four times and threw two interceptions, including one that was returned for a touchdown by Trojan’ linebacker Rey Maualuga.

Things were looking bleak for an Ohio State team coming off back-to-back losses in the national championship game and desperate times called for desperate measures.

Boeckman was out after the USC game, replaced by Pryor, a true freshman who had played only a handful of snaps in the first three games of the season. And yet Pryor guided the Buckeyes to five straight wins—and eight of their next nine—including a last-minute win at Wisconsin and a 42-7 thrashing of archrival Michigan.

It was exactly what Ohio State fans were hoping for—minus a 13-6 loss to Penn State—but was it too much too soon?

“I think my freshman year and my sophomore year I wasn't trying to get better every day,” Pryor admitted.

“I tried to throw the ball deep a lot and go for the big play and I wasn't reading through a lot of things.”

The Buckeyes were winning the games they were supposed to, which kept a lot of the heat off Pryor, but the murmurs that Pryor might not make it as a quarterback began to surface during the 2009 Fiesta Bowl when he completed just five of his 13 pass attempts for 66 yards in a 24-21 loss to Texas.

It wasn’t enough to faze Pryor, and neither was an 18-15 loss to USC in the Horseshoe last Sept. It wasn’t until the disaster at Purdue on Oct. 17 that Pryor was finally faced with his own mortality as a quarterback.

“If any of us were the quarterback at Ohio State, and you've got all these people around you, you're sort of like a superstar. And you start maybe thinking too much of yourself and losing your head a little bit and losing focus,” Pryor said after throwing two picks, fumbling twice and being sacked five times in an absolutely nightmarish game in West Lafayette.

It was the second loss of the year—and by far the most bitter of Pryor’s career. Ohio State’s season was on the brink and Pryor’s golden boy status was starting to fade. But with the pressure mounting around him, it was that hard lesson that reminded Pryor of the one thing he had forgotten.

“I think I was a little arrogant. I'll tell the truth, I think I was arrogant. I was kind of to myself. I didn't know what was special to me. I didn't know what I loved,” Pryor reflected Sunday.

“When you grow up and mature and be around a great group of guys that tell you about yourself and tell you how you act that they don't like and you finally hear it, it's great to hear and you can grow from it. I think that's how I grew.

“I finally I feel humble. Very humble, very appreciative. I appreciate everything and every day I go to work.”

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