Will Howard was hurt on Saturday against Michigan, in body, mind and spirit.

The Ohio State quarterback was hurt when he was briefly forced to leave The Game in the 2nd quarter after taking a hard hit while attempting to run for a first down.

And a few hours later, after the dust settled, Howard was hurt when the Buckeyes offense couldn’t muster an answer to a late Michigan field goal that sealed a 13-10 upset at the Horseshoe.

Howard transferred to OSU from Kansas State in the offseason for days like Saturday, and the fact that he couldn’t put the Buckeyes over the top against a 6-5 Michigan team hurt Howard to the core. He addressed everything at the postgame press conference, including his early injury.

“Everything inside me wants to — there’s nothing inside of me that wanted to come off that field,” Howard said. “I was trying to get up. It hurts, man. It hurts.”

Then, Howard explained how the game went.

“We got to execute better. The bottom line is we lost. And it hurts, man. I can’t say it enough. I’m sorry to Buckeye Nation,” Howard said. “Listen, we still got things ahead of us. We can still run the table and win a national championship. I think that’s what we have to focus on. That has to keep us going.”

Lastly, Howard expressed his feelings for the program he joined.

“This one hurts like hell, man. I feel for those guys that came back, and I feel for Coach (Ryan) Day — everything they poured into this,” he said. “At the end of the day, we still got stuff in front of us. We’ll regroup and go from there tomorrow.”