Ohio State entered this season with a souped-up, $20 million roster that gave it the second-best championship odds. But the Buckeyes were on the brink by late October.

In two games, they’d lost two left tackles for the season - All-American candidate Josh Simmons and his backup, Zen Michalski. Ohio State had convinced six of its star players to return to college instead of becoming early-round NFL Draft picks. The all-in strategy was now threatened to be all-for-not. 

Ohio State head coach Ryan Day had one final move on the chess board: sliding two-time All-Big Ten guard Donovan Jackson to left tackle. In other words, putting the offensive line’s most stable asset into a position where he was a complete unknown.

Like most college kids at a crossroads, Donovan called his father, Todd, after the Ohio State coaches presented him with the plan. He was a surefire early-round NFL Draft pick, and struggles at left tackle could hurt his stock. His first game at left tackle would be against Penn State’s Abdul Carter, the Big Ten Defensive Player of the Year.

Todd stopped him there. If becoming an early-round pick was all Donovan wanted out of college, he would’ve been gone by now. So why, Todd asked, did Donovan come back?

To be part of a team that wins it all, Donovan answered.

“If you stay at left guard, and they throw out a third-string or unprepared left tackle outside of you, will this team have a chance to win it all?” Todd asked his son.

Donovan told Day he would move to left tackle the next day.

Ohio State’s reworked offensive line, which lost two left tackles and Rimington Trophy-winning center Seth McLaughlin, hasn’t allowed a single sack through two College Football Playoff games. Jackson has neutralized first-team all-conference ends in Tennessee’s James Pearce and Oregon’s Matayo Uiagalelei. The Buckeyes face Texas in the Cotton Bowl this Friday because Jackson decided he valued a chance in this game more than his NFL Draft position.

“Of course, I wrestled with it,” Donovan told Eleven Warriors. “I was like, ‘Well, I’ve built this body of work as a guard. Everyone sees me as a guard; why would I move out?’ But then I actually thought about it and was like, ‘I like winning more than I like anything like that.’”

The coaches tabbed Jackson for the move because he’d played left tackle exclusively at Bellaire Episcopal High School, where he became the next five-star in an offensive line factory that also produced current Jacksonville Jaguar Walker Little. 

But Bellaire Episcopal’s run-heavy scheme, and the fact Jackson last did it four years ago, didn’t make a seamless transition in his first start against Penn State. He gave up two sacks to Carter, lost in the middle of Happy Valley up until the fourth quarter. Panicking. He’d spent his entire college career fighting in a 3x3-yard phone booth at guard and now was stranded on an island with the Big Ten’s sacks leader. 

Once Ohio State started pounding the rock, Carter was forced to shift from an outside nine-technique to an in-line defensive end, bringing him into Jackson’s wheelhouse. It became like high school again.

Retired Bellaire Epsicopal coach Steve Leisz recalls how Jackson always knew the defender’s assignment based on the positioning of his hands and feet. But he also used that body language study to know when he’d accomplished his goal: to break the opposing defensive line.

Usually, by early in the third quarter, Jackson would trot to the sidelines to report on a mission accomplished.

“We broke them, Coach.”

Or, put another way four years later, after Ohio State’s 20-13 win over Penn State behind 198 rushing yards in Jackson’s first left tackle start…

“We just had to drop our nuts,” Jackson said.

Todd clipped that response like a proud father and sent it to Donovan’s long-time trainer, Jonathan Younger. It was an ode to one of Younger’s favorite sayings, and a representation of how far Donovan had come. Because Donovan always read body language - in peewee, he’d tell Todd that he could tell whether or not the defender was rushing based on if he saw white on his fingers, meaning they were pressed into the ground ready for attack. But he didn’t always use it to break the defense’s will like he would in high school; he was a gentle giant that blocked until the running back passed and then let up.

It wasn’t until Younger started training him on second-level blocking and showing him old highlight tapes from his days at the University of Arkansas that Donovan realized offensive linemen were allowed to be the meanest people on the field. He’d look at Younger wide-eyed, marveling at how his coach had just run that guy over and sat on him.

That’s how you finish a block, Younger told him.

“His mom and dad always like to attest that he got his mean streak from me,” Younger said. “That was already in that kid. I just helped bring it out.”

Donovan’s support system has, at the same time, created a monster on the field and the model teammate off it, and it’s paid off for Ohio State in the most critical season of Day’s career.

“You can’t teach strength. You can’t teach speed, and you can’t teach will,” Younger said. “Donovan had the will. I can’t really say he’s got the speed - he’s got some quick feet. But he definitely has the will to always want to be better.”

And despite playing a position where doing well means your name isn’t called, he’s blossomed into one of the faces of Ohio State’s football program, a cornerstone of the team’s culture as much as the offensive line.

“He literally is President of the United States material,” Leisz said. “When they (Ohio State) is on Game Day, he’s their representative that is talking. That’s their guy that they lean on to show off Ohio State football.”

Which is why it was so important that he was the one to lead by example and make the selfless decision.