Report: Ohio State center Seth McLaughlin tore his Achilles tendon on Tuesday

The Columbus Dispatch is reporting that the OSU center is likely done for the season.

UPDATE (Nov. 19 at 10:15 p.m. ET): The Columbus Dispatch’s Joey Kaufman and Bill Rabinowitz are reporting that Seth McLaughlin tore his Achilles tendon on Tuesday, almost certainly ending his season and college career. The one difference between the Dispatch’s reports and earlier social media conjecture is that the newspaper’s sources indicate that it happened at an Ohio State practice, not while the offensive lineman was carrying a TV down the stairs.

As more information becomes available, we will update this article as needed.

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Before I get into this, I want to make it clear that Land-Grant Holy Land is not reporting that any Ohio State football players suffered significant injuries on Tuesday evening. We are a blog, we do not have any football beat reporters, so all that follows is based solely on incredibly thinly sourced social media reports, and we are hoping against hope that it is not true.

There has been no confirmation of any of these rumors, either directly from Ohio State or indirectly through a legitimate beat reporter, so take them with anywhere from a grain to a ton of salt.

However, there seems to be some significant smoke that Ohio State starting center Seth McLaughlin has sustained an Achilles injury that appears to be season-ending. There are rumors that McLaughlin was injured not during practice or training at the Woody Hayes Athletic Center, but rather while carrying a TV down a flight of stairs. Apparently, paramedics had to be called in order to take him to get his leg checked out.

While these rumors started to work their way through the Buckeye blogosphere, you started to see more and more connected members of the Ohio State media apparatus commenting on it. Again, none of those individuals is an active member of the beat covering the team, but there were certainly folks who have enough connections to have a better sense of the situation than the average fan on social media.

So, when tweets like that start to come out, concern understandably rises from easily dismissable to near panic levels.

At this point, I was still holding out hope that it was just a tempest in a teapot over some unsourced social media chatter that just caught fire and started spreading with no legitimacy.

However, when longtime college football beat writer Michael Wachsman — who was the first to break the news that Ohio State was firing Chris Holtmann in February — chimed in with more details than I had seen elsewhere, I knew that it was becoming far more likely to be true than not.

Wachsman reported that as of 8:50 p.m. ET, McLaughlin was undergoing an MRI to determine the severity of his injury. Again, no confirmation, he is the best-sourced person to have openly discussed the situation at that point.

Then, Jim Nagy, the executive director of the Senior Bowl, added some credence to the rumors as well. Of course, we have no idea if he was simply reacting to social media reports, or if he heard from someone inside the program, but with someone of his stature adding his voice to the discussion, it is becoming nearly impossible to dismiss the situation as unfounded.