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A kicker can make or break a team’s season. Back in the 2022 Peach Bowl, the Buckeyes almost upset eventual national champion Georgia before a missed 50-yard field goal by Noah Ruggles landed in Marietta.
Then there’s Mike Nugent, who is one of the most
beloved Ohio State players of all-time because of his ability to hit clutch kicks. Nugent was a two-time All-American, along with winning the Lou Groza Award as a senior in 2004. The kicker from Centerville would go on to be drafted in the second round of the 2005 NFL Draft by the New York Jets.
Kicking field goals and extra points for the Buckeyes this year is senior Jayden Fielding, who has been solid in two years as a starter. After hitting 16-of-20 field goals and making 49 extra points in 2023, Fielding was successful on 13 of his 17 field goal attempts last year, along with converting all 73 extra points he was called on to take.
Entering the 2025 season, Fielding has now made 100-straight extra point attempts, with his last miss coming in 2023 at Purdue in a game that was played in soggy conditions in West Lafayette.
Even though Fielding has only missed on eight field goal attempts over the last two seasons, five of those misses have come in important games. After bricking field goals against Penn State, Michigan, and Missouri in 2023, Fielding missed two attempts in the loss to Michigan last season, along with one unsuccessful attempt in the College Football Playoff against Tennessee.
Following some of those big misses, there were probably questions about if Fielding was a clutch kicker. The Texas native was quick to answer those questions, as he would go on to hit his other four field goal attempts in the College Football Playoff, which included 46-yarders against Oregon and Notre Dame.
Fielding sealed the national title for Ohio State when his 33-yard field goal with less than a minute left gave the Buckeyes an 11-point lead over the Fighting Irish.
Despite being a top-10 ranked kicker in the recruiting rankings in 2022, Fielding was a walk-on when he came to Ohio State. Since becoming a Buckeye, Fielding has shown incredible toughness. Not only did Fielding beat out a number of other kickers to win the starting place-kicker job prior to the 2023 season, he has shook off some critical misses over the last couple years and come back even stronger.
Kicking is one of the hardest jobs in football because so much of the role is mental. If a kicker doesn’t have confidence in his abilities, he is likely going to miss more kicks than he makes. Even just one missed kick can rattle a kicker and it could lead to a coach having to find a new starter in the middle of the season. Not every kicker can be a Mike Nugent and be as close to automatic as can be.
This year Fielding will be even more important to the Ohio State offense since the group has so many unknowns. With a new starting quarterback along with replacing running backs TreVeyon Henderson and Quinshon Judkins, drives might not finish with touchdowns quite as much as they did last season, which could leave more responsibility on the foot of Fielding.
As long as Fielding can stay consistent like he has the last two years, as well as cleaning up a few of those missed kicks, the Buckeye offense should still be in good shape.
