Wide receiver Noah Brown lost the 2015 season to a terrible leg injury and while all of the hype is still around him, he knows words are just that without exploits on the field to back them up. He is ready to back them up in 2016.
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COLUMBUS, Ohio – There is no looking back for Ohio State wide receiver Noah Brown.
What happened in the past will stay in the past and the big-time wideout is only looking ahead to 2016 and hoping to show everyone what they have been waiting for, an impact wide receiver and a potential favorite target for quarterback J.T. Barrett.
Before Brown's injury last season there was no denying that the Ohio State players and coaches were very high on Brown's ability to make plays and that he was going to be a focal part of an offense that was deep with weapons.
A broken leg changed all of that but that promise of high potential remained.
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Brown knows those words ring hollow until he is able to get back on the field and show what he can do.
"In my mind right now, that is all hype," Brown said. "I don't really pay too much attention that. I try and go out and do what I can do and I am looking forward this year to show everybody of what I can do so it is not, 'Noah would have been this, would have been that', I plan on going out there and executing this year."
Brown already has the full faith of Barrett.
"Noah, I have trust there," Barrett said recently in an interview with BuckeyeGrove.com "If a guy is on top of Noah, I can just put it anywhere around Noah and Noah is going to get it. Noah has my back and if the ball is in the air, it is his."
Before those big plays happen, Brown has to get back on the field and that means not only getting over the physical strains of the injury (which Brown feels that he has gotten over) but the mental ones as well. Which is tougher to work through?
"I say the physical part really because the mental part, once you are healthy you can't come out and be thinking about your injury," Brown said. "That really has not been a problem. It was a matter of getting to the point that I am at now. I am 100-percent now and I don't think about my injury, I am ready to go."
Urban Meyer believes that Brown is close.
"He's probably not back to full Noah Brown this time of year, but he's, I would say, another week away he'll be there," Meyer said. "He's working his tail off and just love having him back."
Brown dropped a good amount of weight from year one to year two after playing his first year at 245-pounds. People not associated with Ohio State have not been able to see what this slimmer Brown is able to do and for those who have forgotten what Noah is all about on the field he has a little reminder.
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"I like to think of myself as a real all-around receiver," Brown said. "I can run good routes, I try and catch everything that comes my way. The one thing with the losing the weight, I got a little better at stretching the field going deep. That added another component to my game. The thing I take the most pride in is my blocking ability, that got me on the field my freshman year. I continue to take pride in that and do that to the best of my ability."
Brown did not have to look much further than Ezekiel Elliott and Evan Spencer to see the importance of blocking and feels that Spencer really set the tone for Ohio State receivers to take pride in their blocking.
"He was really the most selfless player that I had ever been around and he instilled that culture in our room to take pride in blocking," Brown said. "You saw how the coaches praised him as a result of that, that is the culture of our room that he set."