The ability to quickly move on is not exclusive to athletes. It’s just that the negative impact of not doing so is more immediate in a stadium, arena or on a playing field.

Dwell on a missed tackle or dropped pass one second longer than you should and you risk cascading into another missed tackle and dropped pass moments later. In sports, the past absolutely impacts the present and future. Sometimes for better. Often for worse.

Learning to move on from a mistake is part psychological trick, part emotional hardwiring. It’s in the DNA. Self-confidence is instrumental in taming negative thinking. Some athletes have more belief in their abilities than others, making it easier to quickly bounce back from bad plays. For some, it takes more time. The demons of discouragement and despair are not easily cast into the abyss.

Where things get tricky, at least in team sports, is that one poor performance affects the group. In football, 10 players doing their job up to spec is not good enough. If the 11th player throws an interception, the walls cave in. 

Ohio State is 7-1 and No. 2 in the first College Football Playoff rankings entering Saturday’s game against Purdue. The Buckeyes’ goal is to win a national championship. The path toward that destination will include more bumpy terrain. Fumbles. Missed blocks. Drive-killing penalties.

How far OSU advances into December and January partly depends on how well players bounce back from those miscues. Too often, toughness is considered only physical, when mental recovery is the better measure.

With that in mind, I spoke with four Ohio State players about how they leave the painful past in the past. Each of the four has experienced moments of anguish. Here is how they moved on.

∎ Cornerback Denzel Burke. The senior spoke to reporters Wednesday for the first time since struggling mightily in the 32-31 loss at Oregon, when he twice got beat on long passes. PFF gave Burke a season-low grade of 41.8 out of 100 for his overall performance against the Ducks. He recovered nicely against Nebraska two weeks later; his 70.9 grade out of 100 was more in line with what coaches expect. 

Burke said dealing with the highs (making interceptions) and lows (giving up touchdowns) is “the life of playing corner,” and that his ability to move on to the next play has improved since he arrived in Columbus four years ago.

“Definitely as a freshman,” he said of his propensity to obsess over poor play. “But I’m pretty seasoned now. Been playing a lot of football, and you just have to continue to (believe in yourself), and as you play more ball you get used to those moments.”

Burke credited his faith with helping him navigate the lows that come with the job, and with helping him see that football is not life and death.

“Just having more fun, bringing more energy to the team and fine-tuning my anger,” he said, adding that he felt “dry” after the Oregon game. “Nebraska was a good step in the right direction.” 

Jim Knowles: ‘Not much you can do in the heat of the game.’

Ohio State defensive coordinator Jim Knowles said that when a player is struggling during a game, it’s essential to focus on their training because there is little time for coaches to fix errors based on technique. 

“(Mistakes) happen in practice and you can coach them during practice, where you can see where a guy kind of goes in the tank or battles back,” Knowles said. “So you try to emphasize and show those examples during practice, but during a game, it’s a matter of how he’s been trained.”

∎ Quarterback Will Howard. The fifth-year senior has completed 73.2% of his passes for 1,977 yards and 19 touchdowns, but it’s his five interceptions, including last week’s pick-six at Penn State, that keep him up at night. 

Howard, like Burke, has come a long way in learning how to move on from mistakes. 

“I would say I was bad at it my freshman and sophomore year (at Kansas State),” he said. “I just felt it so many times. In 2020 I threw eight touchdowns and 10 picks. I was struggling turning the ball over and didn’t know how to turn it around. My junior year is when I finally realized how important that next play after that pick is.”

The turning point happened when Howard threw a pick-six against West Virginia in 2022 but rebounded with two touchdown throws. 

“It took some hits and some lumps early in my career, but once I was able to work through that, it’s all about how you respond. As much as I’d love to go back and change that bad play, you can’t. So you just move on and make it right.”

Howard has worked with OSU sports psychologists to navigate his positive and negative in-game emotions and credits his mother, Maureen, with stressing to him that mental preparation is as important as physical.

“I want to have my body ready for the game, but what am I doing to recover my brain, whether that’s taking some time to get away from the game, maybe after the game. Having some escapes, but also a sense of security. When I was young, I’d make a mistake and be like, ‘Am I good enough?’ Now it’s like, ‘I am.’ And when you believe that, you don’t let one play shake who you are.”

Howard’s faith also benefits him after making a bad play.

“Playing for a bigger purpose helps you move past obstacles,” he said.

Will Howard shows ‘knack’ for moving on quickly

Ohio State coach Ryan Day believes recovering quickly from mistakes is one of Howard’s strengths. 

“He’s got a knack for that,” Day said. “There’s a fine line between you making a mistake and ‘Well, just move on to the next play’ and ‘Hold on, I have a major problem here.’ What we try to do in practice, and what I try to do, whether it’s the quarterback or kicker or left guard or corner, is make it hard for them in practice. When they do make a mistake, just get all over them so that they feel what that’s going to be like in a game. And then you watch to see how they respond. If that play bogs them down for the rest of practice, then you know we have some growing up to do here.”

∎ Wide receiver Jeremiah Smith. For all the positive plays the true freshman has made this season, there still have been some clunkers, including dropping his first pass, getting called for offensive pass interference against Oregon and stuttering his steps on a long pass against Penn State that cost OSU a touchdown.

But Smith sounds like a veteran when discussing how to put negativity behind him.

“It’s football. You’ve got a lot of plays left, so you can’t (beat yourself up) on one play,” Smith said, adding that one key to moving on is to accept blame without pointing fingers at others, which can create mistrust that seeps into future plays.

“When I don’t make a play, or the ball doesn’t come my way or I drop it or can’t reach it I feel like that’s on me,” he said. 

Example: Smith blamed himself for the Penn State long ball miscue, saying he expected the ball to go to wide receiver Carnell Tate so he, “Dropped that trot. That’s on me. But I just have to move on and keep making plays down the road.”

∎ Kicker Jayden Fielding. The junior is 5 of 6 on field goals this season, but badly missed a 42-yarder against Oregon and booted three kickoffs out of bounds against Marshall.

“It’s all about mindset. You can’t have a negative mindset ever in any sport, because if you do, you’ll just dig yourself deeper into a hole,” Fielding said, pointing to Howard’s game against Penn State as an example of a strong bounce back.

“Will came out and had a bad start, came back and bounced right back. It’s just what you do if you’re a competitor,” he said. “You have to have a short-term memory.”

Fielding talks to his father about trusting his preparation, which calms the kicker when the pressure builds.

“He’ll go over film with me, and we have those moments and he’ll tell me, ‘Just trust yourself. You’ve been doing it long enough,’ ” Fielding said. “But at some point, it’s just doing what you do.”

And for those times when doing what you do doesn’t go well? Go back to the well and start over. But do it quickly.

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