After piling up 181 tackles — including 40 for loss and eight sacks — as a senior at Lovejoy High School in Lucas, Texas, linebacker Payton Pierce had to wait before he could do anything of the sort in a college practice — even though he early enrolled at Ohio State .
A significant ankle injury in his final prep game sidelined him throughout much of his first semester.
Don’t mistake Pierce for a summer enrollee, though. He wasn’t held back by his boot. Pierce — a finalist for the High School Butkus Award last year — absorbed loads of information during his first seven months with the Buckeyes.
When he finally took the field at the start of training camp this month, his football acumen and instinct showed.
“He’s not behind at all,” Ohio State linebackers coach James Laurinaitis said Wednesday. “There’s some certain tweaks to the defense that you gotta feel and experience and stuff, you know. But the thing you notice from Day 1 with Payton is that he was going to come downhill. And he’s very natural, very natural in the box. He has an understanding for blocking schemes and how to fall back on certain gaps.