COLUMBUS, Ohio — Noah Potter was working his way back.

His foot was never right, something Ohio State defensive line coach Larry Johnson noticed when he was watching film with his defensive lineman, something that hadn’t been right since he was in high school. It kept Potter out of the season early, getting surgery before the season opener against Minnesota.

But Potter was on schedule, aiming to return to the practice field during the Buckeyes’ bye week, plugging himself in on the inside of the defensive line with a different body type and different pass rush ability.

However, as his return inched closer, two weeks away from that bye week deadline he set for himself, Potter realized he didn’t have any peripheral vision in his right eye.

Instead of traveling with his teammates to Piscataway, New Jersey to take on Rutgers, Potter traveled to a doctor’s office.

“You know when doctors are talking to each other and not talking to me, you’re like, ‘OK, something’s going on,’” Potter said.

The former four-star defensive end had a torn retina in his eye, one that needed surgery immediately.

“You just kind of take eyesight for granted, especially as a young person,” Potter said. “And not being able to see, I couldn’t really see out of it for about two weeks. To not be able to see out of it was just humbling that, you know, everything can change. I’m just thankful for the doctors that were able to fix it.”

There wasn’t much Potter could do.

He had to wait for the scar tissue to go down, something that could have led to another surgery, giving him a cataract and permanent vision loss, something, fortunately for Potter, it never came to.

During the recovery process, the defensive end was forced to lay on his side to get the fluid out of his deformed eye with a gas bubble, only allowed up for five minutes every hour. He couldn’t go anywhere or do anything, sitting at home watching his team on TV.

Potter said he got into a dark place. But to him, it was just part of knowing that recovering from surgery was going to be a bit discouraging.

Mental health issues weren’t new for Potter. Coming off a great summer working heading into the 2020 season, being voted as the Most Improved player during workouts, the defensive end struggled as the season was in limbo, admitting to Johnson he was in a bad mental state and that he felt “numb” at points.

It’s something that led him to Ohio State’s sports psychologists, being able to talk through things he had normally kept inside.

“You get told growing up, ‘You’re a man. You got to keep it in,’' Potter said. “So I would just always lock it down and keep it really close to the chest, not tell anyone, just kind of push through it because that’s always what I have learned is just push through it and it’ll get better."

Throughout Potter’s recovery from his foot and eye surgeries, he said he felt support, starting with head coach Ryan Day, who would ask him how he was doing throughout his recovery: support, the defensive end said, that was helpful through his dark time.

As a self-described advocate for mental health, Potter watched as his head coach and his teammate Harry Miller made their personal stories public, whether it was Day’s College GameDay feature about his father’s death by suicide that Potter watched from his home while in recovery, or Miller’s medical retirement due to mental health issues, issues Potter had seen in the past few years, saying “we’ve been sharing some of the same struggles.”

“It’s just really good to see that we have a culture here that allows that,” Potter said. “Having mental health issues is not a weakness. We all have mental health issues in some capacity. So having that avenue to reach out to someone and to speak without having any judgment because this is just a pressure cooker in the environment we’re in.

“Coach Day talks about it all the time. We’re one of the top four, five schools in the nation. Eyes are always on us.”

Potter expects for eyes to be back on him this fall. Other than the fact that he has to wear a visor on his helmet while playing — something he said he hates, but understands that it’s part of the adjustments necessary to get him back on the field — the defensive end is back on track.

So Johnson, Potter said, is looking for a role to put him in. And the defensive lineman doesn’t care whether it’s back outside or inside like the plan originally was.

He’s just looking for a position and a chance to show off what he can do.

“I kind of lost that drive. After two serious things happened, I kind of lost that drive. I’m like, ‘Man, I’m just trying to get healthy,’” Potter said. “But now that I’m healthy, I’m really starting to get that drive back to want to be the best player I can.”

Potter has that drive back. He can see. He can run.

And now, he can play football.