ESPN College Football

CINCINNATI -- Even with all the attention Cincinnati got last year on its way to the Orange Bowl, the man protecting the blind side stayed mostly invisible.

The Bearcats had a quotable head coach in Brian Kelly, an explosive offense, the story line of their many quarterback injuries and several stars on defense. Hardly anybody talked about left tackle Jeff Linkenbach. Maybe they should have.

Linkenbach didn't make the first or second All-Big East team last season, but he still had a standout, if under-the-radar, year. After all, how would Cincinnati have been able to keep scoring points through all that quarterback shuffling and without a star running back if it didn't have an anchor on the offensive line?

"Any time you talk about left tackles, whether it's the Cincinnati Bengals in the draft or the University of Cincinnati, he's got to be a franchise player for you," Kelly said. "And Jeff is our franchise player."

Kelly wouldn't have said the same thing about Linkenbach this time last year. Linkenbach was coming off a sophomore season in which he made only three starts at right tackle while fighting through a nagging leg injury. The Bearcats weren't sure who would play left tackle for them during last year's preseason camp and gave looks to Khalil El-Amin and Jason Kelce there as well as Linkenbach, who had played left tackle as a freshman.

"It was just a process where Jeff took it over," said offensive coordinator and offensive line coach Jeff Quinn. "As a coach, it's very special to see a young man step in and say, 'That's going to be my spot.'"

Like many Bearcats, Linkenbach wasn't heavily recruited. Cincinnati and several MAC schools showed the most interest in the Sandusky, Ohio, native. Northwestern, West Virginia and Louisville tried to get in on him late in his senior year of high school.

The 6-foot-6, 310-pounder admits he was overweight and not very strong when he first started playing at Cincinnati. He cut his weight down to 280 at one point, then built back up with muscle. Kelly said Linkenbach is much more physical now than he was when the current coaching staff arrived in 2006.

He had little choice but to toughen up last season, when he had to face defensive end Connor Barwin every day in practice. Barwin is expected to go in the first couple of rounds of Saturday's NFL draft.

This spring, Linkenbach and the rest of the offensive line have been challenged against the Bearcats' new-look 3-4 defense, which is throwing blitzes and coverages from all sorts of new angles at them. It doesn't hurt that Linkenbach, an academic All-Big East honoree last year, is one of the best students on the team.

Linkenbach said his goal this spring was to become a more vocal leader for his senior year. And he wants the offensive line to do a better job in short-yardage running situations.

"We're hoping to be able to pound the ball and get those important yards, the tough yards we haven't been able to get in previous years," he said. "It's more of a mindset now. We're more focused."

As for the lack of focus on him, Linkenbach says he doesn't mind if he's not being singled out as one of the best tackles in the Big East yet.

"I'd like to be considered in that class," he said. "But I don't want the hype first. I've got to prove myself to be in that class."