This change helped Tegra Tshabola become a starter for the Ohio State football team

After his first two seasons with the Ohio State football team, Tegra Tshabola had not made much of an impact on the offensive line. He decided a change was needed. During the offseason, he adopted an attitude of, “Nobody cares.” That attitude adjustment helped propel the redshirt sophomore to becoming the starter at right guard.

“Nobody cares” takes in a few things, but it mostly means the game of football doesn’t care. When you step onto the field, it doesn’t care if you’ve had a bad day. It doesn’t care where you think you should be on the depth chart. The game doesn’t care. Football only cares about how hard you work when you’re on the field. During the offseason, Tshabola decided it was time to adopt this attitude.

After redshirting as a true freshman, the once-highly touted recruit from Lakota West (#6 tackle and #36 player overall player according to 247 Sports) played in all 13 games last season on special teams but got just 32 offensive snaps. But during spring practice, a change in him was evident and, although he did not appear to be the leader, he was in the battle for the open spot at right guard.

Based on things Ryan Day said early in fall camp, I felt Carson Hinzman, last year’s starter at center, was the leader to win the job. But Hinzman has been slow to recover from what was termed a mystery illness that made its way through the offensive line group. Thsabola and his new attitude made the most of the opportunity and, on Tuesday, was named the starter at right guard by Ryan Day.

Offensive coordinator Chip Kelly loves Thsabola’s size (6’6”, 327 pounds) and gave the reason in simple terms, “We like offensive linemen that are big, because big people beat up little people. So we like Tegra a lot.” He also said Thsabola is very athletic and is long (meaning he has long arms, etc.). Kelly pointed out it is a big help to the offense when linemen can keep defenders out of the way by using their long arms.

We’ve all seen athletes who need an attitude adjustment, but very few can do it themselves. Thsabola took it upon himself to make the change and rode it all the way to a starting job on the Buckeyes’ offensive line.