“I just needed to get one, especially against those guys,” says Tyree Kinnel, reflecting on 14 seconds he has thought about often for the last 727 days.
To fully appreciate the woe of the play Kinnel cannot get out of his mind requires an understanding of the forces that shaped him from birth. Enter Chris, Kinnel’s father, who put a Michigan-branded football in his son’s hands mere hours into his life. Erica, Tyree’s mother, was something of a rarity among Ohioans: a non-Buckeye fan. Her older cousin was a Michigan fan, and she and Chris made gamedays a family bonding experience, Erica putting a spread together for the family to snack on, and Chris leading their kids in chanting “It’s great to be a Michigan Wolverine.” They attended spring games religiously, and their annual trip to the Big House turned into a weekly affair the past four falls after their eldest son committed to Michigan.
And there was that son checking into the 2016 Michigan-Ohio State game on second-and-goal from Michigan’s 6-yard-line. Defensive packages had been designed that season that utilized him and even played to his strengths, but this was different; Dymonte Thomas had been flattened by a block on the previous play, and Kinnel was checking in for the first time as an every-down safety. Kinnel stepped toward the line of scrimmage, saw receiver Noah Brown was running a drag route, and flowed over the top of two oncoming receivers to stick with Brown as he emerged on the right side of the line. Ohio State quarterback JT Barrett took a jab step forward for nominal play-action before rolling right, straight into a blitzing Ben Gedeon. Barrett lobbed the ball to the end zone. It sailed just over the hand of Michigan linebacker Mike McCray and was headed right for Kinnel before the would-be interception grazed the tips of Brown’s fingers, the flight path adjusting ever so slightly. Kinnel jumped in response to the new angle and stretched his left arm out as far as he could to corral the wobbling ball. It hit the top of his hand and then the turf, bounding out of the back of the end zone. Third-and-goal, 7:43 remaining. “I still live with that today because it could have been a big play in that type of game and everyone knows how it ended, so I’ve always thought about that and kind of slept on that,” Kinnel says. “It stays with me for a long time.”
“I still look at the picture a lot,” Kinnel adds. This surprised precisely zero people that I spoke to for this piece. The goals of players and fans don’t necessarily align often, but when you’re a player who grew up a fan, your penultimate goal is the same: Beat Ohio State.
When Kinnel says he wants to beat the Buckeyes it is not lip service and it is not fan service. We’re sitting in front of the massive window that runs the length of the front of Schembechler Hall one night in November when our interview seems to be wrapping up. I turn off my recorder and start the small talk that I make at the end of interviews attempting to minimize the awkwardness of an interview simply ceasing. Usually there’s a little bit about logistics--here’s when I plan to write this, do you have anyone else in mind that I should talk to, etc.--and we go our separate ways. In the middle of this, Kinnel tells me that he doesn’t mind if I write about how much this Ohio State game means to him or how badly he wants this win. We’re weeks away from The Game. I flip the switch up again on my recorder and hit the red circle.
[After THE JUMP: converting Buckeyes, landing The offer, a career ahead of schedule, and Saturday in Columbus]
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