Ohio State fans tracking former Buckeyes in the NFL got a familiar late-summer update this week: Seth McLaughlin is still in the league, and Detroit still wants him.
The Lions signed the 2024 consensus All-American center to their practice squad after waiving him from the 53-man roster earlier in the week. Detroit announced the move Monday, bringing McLaughlin back alongside running back Jabari Small after both cleared waivers.
It is the latest chapter in a grind that began the moment a torn Achilles ended his only season in Columbus.
McLaughlin arrived from Alabama in January 2024 as a graduate transfer and immediately became the anchor Ryan Day needed. He started the first 10 games at center, graded as a “champion” in every one of them by Ohio State coaches, and helped an offensive line that ranked among the nation’s best in sacks and tackles for loss allowed. He did not surrender a sack in those 10 starts.
In December, he collected the Rimington Trophy as the country’s top center and consensus first-team All-America honors — the first Ohio State center to earn consensus All-America status since Pat Elflein. He also earned first-team All-Big Ten and Academic All-America recognition.
Then came the injury. In mid-November, during the week of the Indiana game, McLaughlin ruptured his Achilles in practice. He never played again as a Buckeye. Ohio State still won the 2024 College Football Playoff national championship, and McLaughlin still owns a ring from that run. The timing, though, cost him draft stock.
He went undrafted in 2025, signed with Cincinnati, and spent his entire rookie year on the Bengals’ practice squad. Detroit signed him to a reserve/future deal in January 2026.
This summer he pushed for snaps while starter Cade Mays dealt with a wrist injury, even taking first-team work at times. A concussion protocol stint late in camp complicated the picture.
The Lions kept him on the initial 53, then waived him Sept. 2 — a common roster-management move that allowed them to bring him back to the practice squad without an injury settlement hanging over the situation.
From a Buckeyes perspective, this is the kind of persistence the program likes to see. McLaughlin was never a four-year Columbus fixture, but his one season was elite.
He stabilized the middle of the line for Will Howard, TreVeyon Henderson and Quinshon Judkins, then watched teammates finish the job he helped start. Practice-squad life is unglamorous. Elevations happen. Injuries happen. Detroit’s interior line is still in flux with Mays sidelined.
For now, the 6-foot-4, 304-pound center from Buford, Georgia, is a Lion again — and still a Buckeye in scarlet-and-gray memory.
One year of Ohio State football produced a Rimington Trophy, a consensus All-America nod, a national title, and a professional career that refuses to end after the first setback. That is a résumé worth following every week.
