They wanted to showcase the running game…freshman Bo Jackson gets some blocking help from teammate Brandon Inniss to score the first of his two touchdowns on the day in the first quarter. (Press Pros Feature Photos by Sonny Fulks)
Ohio State’s hopes for an unbeaten regular season once again come down to The Game. You have questions? Of course. But they won’t be answered until sometime around 3 o’clock next Saturday.
Columbus, OH – At 3:23 p.m. Saturday, Michigan week commenced.
“It’s that week – that’s it,” Ohio State defensive end Kenyatta Jackson said. “No words to be said.”
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But there are many questions.
Questions – as meaningful and as unlikely to be satisfactorily answered as ever – that will reverberate this week from Ohio to the edges of the college football universe.
To reach Week 12 and the rivalry game, the No. 1 Buckeyes completed an 11-0 start with a matter-of-fact, sometimes boring, 42-9 victory over Rutgers, which played as Rutgers as ever.
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No question the Buckeyes are worthy of being ranked No. 1. No question they should be heavily favored to beat Michigan. But …
Will wide receivers extraordinaire Jeremiah Smith and Carnell Tate make it off the injury list?
“They are day to day, and the staff and those guys are working really hard to get ready to play next week,” head coach Ryan Day said with as much transparency as you might expect.
How did the rest of the wide receiving corps – Brandon Inniss, David Adolph, Mylan Graham – acquit themselves against Rutgers’ No. 83 in the nation pass defense?
“There’s some good things that they did,” Day said. “There’s some things they’ll get on film and get better at, but we need to play depth. Everyone knows that, and this is their opportunity.”
With that opportunity, they combined to catch four passes for 33 yards and an Inniss touchdown.
Is the run game Michigan ready?
“We always want to do better, but again when you rush the ball 38 times for 254 yards that’s good coming out,” Day said. “We’ll get on a film and figure out what’s what. We’ve got to sort through everything and figure out what the efficiency of each run was.”
Is the run game ready? Freshman Isaiah West averaged six yards per carry…8 totes for 48 yards.
The run game production trend provides promise. Against UCLA and Rutgers, the Buckeyes averaged 6.7 yards per carry, the best days this season against Power 5 opponents. For four straight games, the run game has produced a season-high in yards against FBS opponents.
Rutgers sports one of the 12 worst rush defenses in the country, and the Buckeyes took advantage. There was evidence of well-executed blocks on the edge, holes through the middle and the most Bo Jackson seen all season. He toted the football a season-high 19 times and gained 110 yards, topped only by the 112 he gained last week.
At 835 yards, Jackson is on his way to 1,000 whether he gets there against Michigan or a later date. But if he does, that will be a definitive yes as to whether the run game has arrived despite a right side of the line that has been rotating three, sometimes four, players.
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“For us to find that we got that depth is huge for us,” center Carson Hinzman said. “Seth McLaughlin said it really well last year. At this point in the season, everyone’s a starter so everyone has to compete and train like it.”
And the biggest question of all: Will the dreaded four-game losing streak in The Game end? OK, let’s rephrase: What’s the lesson from last year?
Can you find the ball? Bo Jackson’s fumble at the goal line on the opening possession was a temporary setback in the win over Rutgers.
“Gotta win … gotta win,” Hinzman said.
Beating Michigan for the first time since 2019 never left this team’s mind since that inexplicable 13-10 loss last season in the Horseshoe. The team met with Day after that game, talked it out, and began to steel the resolve it will take to play to win in Ann Arbor, not play to not lose.
Hinzman said the formation of what they call the Redemption Group, led by Gee Scott and other faith leaders on the team, emerged from that meeting.
“That was a big meeting for the team, but I thought the way we prayed out afterwards was what set our minds, set our set our hearts, set our souls ready to go and play later that season,” Hinzman said. “That’s not only carried on from that season to the postseason last year, but also this year. We got a lot of similar guys to last year, guys that are ready to go out and play for God and play for each other, and that’s all we need right now.”
And the best defense in the country helps a whole lot, too.
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The Scarlet Knights (5-6, 2-6 Big Ten) ventured west with the No. 6 offense in the Big Ten. But they limped back east with season lows in points, yards (147) and yards per play (2.7).
The Buckeyes pressured Athan Kaliakmanis consistently and sacked him four times. And on senior day, senior end Caden Curry made one of the most memorable plays of his career.
Caden Curry thought he had scored on this fumble recovery following a sack in the third quarter. The replay convinced him otherwise.
In the middle of the third quarter, he got a great jump off the snap, sacked Kaliakmanis for an 11-yard loss, forced a fumble and recovered it as close to the end zone as you can come without getting credit for a touchdown.
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“I definitely thought I got in the end zone, but obviously the refs didn’t think I did,” he said. “Someone showed me the replay in locker room. I saw I had the ball across the plane. But it is what it is, and we live on.”
The Buckeyes had to overcome a holding penalty to take a 21-3 lead on an 11-yard touchdown pass from Julian Sayin to tight end Max Klare, who set season highs with seven catches and 105 yards as the No. 1 target.
And the Buckeyes’ trend of leading at halftime (often by not a lot like 14-3 on this day) and putting teams away in the second half continued.
Jackson scored his second touchdown on a 10-yard run, CJ Donaldson scored from the 5 and James Peoples dashed home from 49 yards out to conclude the rout.
Sayin’s Heisman Trophy push got no favors. Without his best playmakers, he completed 13 of 19 for 157 yards and two touchdowns. Backup Lincoln Kienholz got valuable reps with three passes and three rushes for 37 yards.
The Buckeyes, with Sayin and his secondary wide receivers still getting to know each other on game day, started the way any No. 1 team should start against any Rutgers team ever. They stuck to the ground and threw to the tight ends to advance the ball 73 yards to the 1-yard line in 11 plays.
Trailing 14-3 at the half, Rutgers coach Greg Schiano must have believed he had a chance to win. The Buckeyes’ defense said he didn’t.
Then, Jackson, who rushed for 51 of those yards, took a handoff at the 1. But only the ball made it into the end zone where Rutgers recovered the fumble.
Freshmen.
Rutgers, however, made no use of the turnover, and bumbled a fourth-and-1 situation at their 29. They lined up, trying the old trick of drawing the Buckeyes offside. Didn’t work.
Greg Schiano and his offensive staff used their timeout to talk themselves out of a play that might have worked. Instead, they instructed Kaliakmanis to bounce up and down the line, calling faux signals, moving lineman one way then the other.
Then, in a moment that fooled no one, Kaliakmanis handed off for a run up the middle. Antwan Raymond went this way, saw two Buckeyes, went that way and right into safety Jaylen McClain and Curry for no gain.
That’s the play you run when you’re Rutgers because you don’t have multiple playmakers. But Ohio State does, even if when the two best ones are out it takes more time than usual to make big plays.
Cue Jackson.
The Buckeyes’ defense smothers Rutgers running back Antwan Raymond, and held the Knights to 100 yards on 35 carries.
He made up for his fumble soon enough with a 15-yard touchdown run and 7-0 lead. He ran straight ahead through a hole the size of which could only be created against a defense as poor as Rutgers. Then Jackson put a move on a defender, the kind that creates excitement about the true freshman.
Jackson might be needed to produce like that at Michigan if one or both receivers don’t make it back. The most impactful performance by a freshman back against Michigan in recent memory was Maurice Clarett in 2002 when he rushed for 119 yards, scored a touchdown and set up the winning score with a memorable reception on a wheel route.
And Clarett, like Smith and Tate, battled a late-season injury.
Tight end Max Klare had his best day with 7 catches for 105 yards and a touchdown.
Michigan week, no matter what, has a way of not ending the way it’s supposed to, injuries or not. The Buckeyes are entering The Game unbeaten for the 10th time since 1995 and are 5-4 in such games. The underdog has won four of the past six meetings.
Again, so much comes down to The Game. A spot in the Big Ten title game, a chance to continue a march toward the No. 1 seed in the playoffs and getting the Michigan monkey of the backs of all Ohioans.
“It’s a huge week,” Jackson said. “But we’re going to stick to our regular routine like we did all season. Nothing’s going to change.”
Except, he hopes, the result for the first time since 2019.
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