(Almost) Gone with the wind: Ohio State avoids catastrophe but takes step back | Opinion
EVANSTON, Ill. – Putting lipstick on a pig is challenging enough without doing so in 30-mph winds and driving rain.
That’s a way of saying it is impossible to make Ohio State’s Saturday oinker appear more presentable. If this were 1922, when Chicago was “hog butcher of the world,” instead of 2022, the Buckeyes would have been snorting around at the Union Stockyards instead of Northwestern’s Ryan Field. As it is, OSU likely only avoids getting slaughtered by the College Football Playoff selection committee, which releases its second week of rankings Tuesday, because other playoff contenders suffered worse fates.
Simply put, you can’t barely defeat a 38-point underdog, a 1-7 team whose only win came across the pond in the season opener – Northwestern clipped Nebraska in Dublin, Ireland – to the tune of 21-7 and expect to be considered the cream of the college football crop. And, honestly, the Buckeyes aren’t. Or at least weren’t on Saturday. Not with this running game. Not with the run defense that allowed a Wildcats offense ranked 106th in rushing to run for 206 yards.
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Was the wind a factor? Yes. For both teams. The nearly 50-mph gusts – “I’ve never been around conditions like that,” Ryan Day said – grounded Ohio State’s passing attack, but that is no excuse. Pass-reliant teams like the Buckeyes have to be able to adjust to the conditions. They have to put their hand in the dirt, dig in, dig down and beat their man.
Instead, Ohio State at times looked like melting ice cream, like the team that got manhandled by both Oregon and Michigan last season. The Buckeyes were hotel-room tired early on, turning Day’s mantra of “competitive stamina” into something more resembling “collective insomnia.”
More excuses: Ohio State was due for a letdown after winning at Penn State last week. And it wouldn’t be the first time OSU struggled after playing the Nittany Lions. The stunning 2017 loss at unranked Iowa followed an emotional 39-38 win over PSU in Ohio Stadium. Also, the Buckeyes tend to play sleepy in late morning games (kickoff was 11 a.m. CDT).
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Whatever. Peel back the “Yeah, buts …” and you’re left with a team that continues to struggle when forced to play smash-mouth football. And also a coaching staff that appears to struggle to adjust to what the defense is doing. Case in point: Six weeks ago the Buckeyes had two 100-yard rushers in TreVeyon Henderson and Miyan Williams. They still ran it well a week later against Rutgers, but over the past month, the run game has stalled. Iowa held OSU to 66 yards rushing, Penn State to 98.
Williams rushed for 111 of OSU’s 207 yards against Northwestern, but it was quarterback C.J. Stroud’s 79 yards on six carries that got the eyebrows arching among Buckeye Nation. You may recall that early last season after the Nebraska game Stroud said, “If my job was to run the ball I’d be a running back.”
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Against Northwestern he needed to be, even more so because of his mere 76 yards on 10-for-26 passing.
That's a problem.
Day explained that once it became obvious the passing game would not work, the options became limited. As in two. With the Wildcats putting an extra man in the box, either Williams needed to run over the extra defender or Stroud had to get involved in the run game. Both options worked decently. No argument there. The issue is more that a team competing for a national championship should not need to deconstruct its offense against the worst team in the Big Ten.
What happens if winds whip up Nov. 26 when Michigan comes to Columbus? A game plan that relies on crossed fingers for good weather is not found in any winner’s manual. The 283 total yards against Northwestern were the fewest since Day took over the program in 2019.
If that sounds like it’s being too hard on the Buckeyes – after all, the best thing about being 9-0 is … – consider they knew on Wednesday that high winds were likely. And yet the offense still sputtered.
“Seeing the weather report (Wednesday), we knew (about the wind),” OSU wide receiver Emeka Egbuka said, adding that the glass-half-full response to Saturday’s offensive woes was the Buckeyes were able to “build (a) tool kit” by concentrating on running the ball.
Except too often, especially in short-yardage situations, the run game came up short. Williams twice was stopped for no gain on third-and-1, and at one point Ohio State was 0-8 on third-down conversions, finishing 4 of 15.
Defensively, OSU was only adequate; once again the Buckeyes seem to struggle against mobile quarterbacks. But when pointing fingers the main culprit remains the running game.
A week ago, Day strongly dismissed the notion the offense was somehow tipping its pitches, allowing defenses to know that a run was coming. Fine, but how else to explain it, besides wondering if the O-line is fundamentally more of a finesse outfit than one that blows people off the ball?
Football first and foremost is a game of impact. Bodies collide like a human car crash. Against the Wildcats, Ohio State avoided getting totaled. Next time will it be so lucky?