Carson Hinzman

The discourse around Hinzman has completely flipped, and he lived through both ends of it. In 2023 he started every regular-season game at center, drew heavy fan and media criticism, and then watched Matt Jones slide over to take his spot in the Cotton Bowl while Ryan Day talked publicly about him "having a tough time." He called 2023 a "developmental year," lost the starting job in 2024, and clawed back as a midseason fill-in. Then 2025 happened: 14 starts at center, first-team AFCA All-America honors, All-Big Ten, and a national title with the ball going through his hands every snap.

The interesting wrinkle is why he stayed. Draft evaluators had him pegged as a likely undrafted free agent had he declared, so this fifth year is an explicit bet on himself, and the staff returns him as the "quarterback" of a line that brings back four starters. Beat writers have spent the offseason framing this exact unit as the swing variable, with Land-Grant Holy Land calling Ohio State's line "the difference between a playoff team and a championship team" and asking whether experience finally takes it "from competent to elite." Hinzman is also on the short list for the Rimington Award and landed on Athlon's preseason All-America team.

So the stake is unusually clean for an interior lineman. If the Buckeyes are going to chase another title, the room he runs has to play to a Joe Moore Award ceiling against elite fronts, and the guy who was a benching cautionary tale in 2023 is now the one expected to make it happen, in his last year, with his own draft grade riding on it.