EAST LANSING, Mich. — The most coveted high school football player in the country last recruiting season slipped into his coach's office Friday in Columbus, Ohio, and offered him a deal.

"If I don't take us down the field on the first drive or second drive or third drive," Terrelle Pryor told his coach, Jim Tressel, "bench me."

After watching Pryor play Saturday in East Lansing, the coach was glad he didn't.

"Terrelle's a competitive guy," Tressel explained after his Buckeyes beat Michigan State, 45-7, to stay undefeated in the Big Ten. "When he looks at the film and doesn't like it, he questions himself."

Tressel said he'd never had a player asked to be benched before. Then again, he's never had a player quite like Pryor.

The 6-foot-6, 235-pound freshman quarterback was a one-man reality TV show last winter as every college in America wooed him. He was the most highly regarded high school football player in years, maybe ever.

He ran. He threw. He had size. And he did it all so effortlessly.

So when he took over the starting QB spot after the third week of the season — leapfrogging Todd Boeckman, a senior who'd led the team to the national title game last year — he faced immense pressure to produce.

Yet in his first four starts before Michigan State, he didn't. Even though Ohio State was winning, the team's meager offensive production fell at the feet of the freshman. It didn't help that his receivers were beginning to question whether he could get them the ball. Nor did it help that some college football analysts were suggesting he was overrated.

"I don't care," he said of the negative attention. "I brush that off."

When asked if he was beginning to doubt himself, he replied: "Nah. I never doubt myself."

But he clearly did.

Otherwise, he never would've walked into Tressel's office Friday before the trip up to East Lansing.

"I just told him to relax," Tressel said.

Unfortunately for the Spartans, he did.

On the second play of the game, Pryor faked a handoff, rolled left, threw a hesitation move on a safety, slid past him and up the sideline for 32 yards . With each long, relaxed stride, he seemed to cover 10 yards. And it was only the angle of MSU's backfield pursuit that saved a touchdown.

All game long, Pryor moved around Spartan Stadium like a hovercraft over water. He'd start one way and casually shift course and find another, often leaving MSU's tacklers confused and twisted. And when he did directly confront them, he'd either lower his shoulder and run over them or simply flick them away like a gnat on his shoulder.

"That's what I do," Pryor said afterward . "I stiff-arm people."

His dominance was almost ethereal. And in no way can his performance be explained in the stats. He only threw the ball 11 times, completing seven passes .

He ran only 12 times, amassing 72 yards. In total, he accounted for 188 yards. Admittedly, his team was helped by the five turnovers the Spartans coughed up.

Still, the most famous freshman in college football began finding himself in East Lansing on Saturday. When he learns to plant his feet and use that formidable frame as leverage when he throws, forget about it.

"I'm getting used to the speed of the game," he said as he leaned against a wall just outside Spartan Stadium long after the crowd had left. "I haven't proven anything yet. People don't know what I can do. They say I'm overrated. Wait and see."