In the weeks leading up to Ohio State’s Cotton Bowl loss to the Missouri Tigers, Ohio State starting center Carson Hinzman gave an extremely candid podcast interview detailing the current state of the Buckeye football program under head coach Ryan Day. But it seems that he might have been a little bit too candid as the podcast was quickly deleted, and Hinzman did not play a single snap in the Cotton Bowl last week.
About a week and a half before the Cotton Bowl, Hinzman joined “The B&B Podcast” where he opened up about several things Ohio State probably would have preferred not to become public.
In the podcast, Hinzman claimed that the Buckeyes had far fewer practices ahead of the Cotton Bowl than they did for their bowl prep last season, replacing them with “light workouts” instead. He also alleged that the Miami Hurricanes offered former Ohio State commits Justin Scott and Jordan Lyle massive amounts of money to flip their commitments, and claimed that “Ohio State doesn’t really like to pay guys a whole lot” in the form of NIL payments, claiming that offensive linemen in particular “don’t get paid” at Ohio State.
Hinzman also compared the current culture of the program under Day to the culture under previous head coach Urban Meyer, indicating that Meyer’s practices and workouts were much more difficult and asked a lot more of players physically. He also spoke candidly about fights during practice and his disdain for his current strength and conditioning goals.
The podcast attracted a lot of attention from Ohio State fans on social media, but it was quietly deleted from both YouTube and Amazon a couple of days after it was initially published on Dec. 20, though it remains available on Listen Notes.
I really enjoyed the Carson Henzman interview.
* Matt Jones may get some reps at Center for the bowl for NFL film.
* Miami threw a ton of money at Justin Scott and Jordan Lyle to flip.
* They had an OL recruit come in and ask for a $1M per year that went to Miami.
* Unproven…
— jbook™ (@jbook37) December 22, 2023
The fact that the podcast was quietly deleted is interesting enough as it suggests that someone was not exactly happy with the content of the interview, but things got even more interesting when the Cotton Bowl kicked off.
Even though Hinzman started all 12 regular season games for the Buckeyes this season, he did not play a single snap in the Cotton Bowl showdown with Missouri as former starting right guard Matt Jones moved to center for the game with senior offensive lineman Enokk Vimahi starting in his place at right guard.
While the timing seems like quite a coincidence, Ohio State head coach Ryan Day said after the game that the move was due to Hinzman’s recent struggles in practice.
“Carson was having a tough time the last couple weeks of practice and we felt this was the right thing to do at the time,” Day said of the move after the game. “It was not that Carson will never play here again but based on the last couple of weeks of play, the decision was made that Matt gave us the best chance at center.”
The move wasn’t completely shocking. Hinzman has been the weak point on the team’s offensive line throughout the season resulting in Jones getting reps at center during Ohio State’s Week 11 game against Michigan State. Plus, Hinzman himself indicated in the aforementioned podcast that Jones was expected to see some reps at center to “show out a little” and potentially help his NFL Draft stock.
But obviously, Jones played more than just a few reps at center in the bowl game – he played the entire game, and Ohio State made no changes to its offensive line even though it was by far the unit’s worst performance of the entire season.
It may be a genuine coincidence that Hinzman was benched shortly after a recklessly candid podcast that has since been deleted, but the whole situation is quite interesting regardless.
