Ohio State Football: Tommy Eichenberg snubbed from major award

The Ohio State football team has had major improvement on the defensive side of the ball. They are a truly good defense that can be relied upon for stops. We’ll see how they do against their toughest competition of the season Saturday afternoon against TTUN, but they’ve been good.

Tommy Eichenberg has been the leader of the defense. He has been all over the field this season for the Buckeyes. He’s 14th in the country in tackles with 105 total tackles. He also has 2.5 sacks, two passes defended, and a pick-six that he had in the Iowa game.

Eichenberg has been the heart and soul of this Buckeye defense. Yet, he is getting no love from the national media. He was snubbed from a major defensive award. The Butkus Award is given to the best linebacker in the country and they just announced their finalists. He wasn’t on the list.

The finalists are all pretty good, but you can’t tell me that Eichenberg doesn’t belong as one of the five final guys. If you want to tell me that he doesn’t have the sack numbers to win, that’s fine. But the impact he has on the game is felt on every single play.

The Ohio State football team would not be undefeated heading into The Game without the play of Eichenberg. How well he patrols the middle in the run game has been imperative to how quickly this defensive unit has improved as a whole. He deserves recognition for that.

Ohio State doesn’t focus on individual accolades. Every single player on this roster is more concerned with winning games and titles than they are individual awards. But I guarantee you that Eichenberg sees this and uses it as motivation on Saturday.