COLUMBUS, Ohio - Many national experts are starting to realize what Ohio State fans knew all along or at least hoped that they knew... this Ohio State team is pretty good.

Granted, the Buckeyes have not really played anyone as of yet, even with a league win in their pocket against the Hoosiers. But the same thing can be said about most teams outside of LSU, who sits with a top-10 win over Texas.

We likely are not going to learn how this team responds under pressure this week as Ohio State hosts Miami (Ohio) to close out the non-conference portion of their schedule. There is no shame in playing teams from the Mid-American Conference and Miami (Ohio) was voted to finish 2nd in the East Division in the preseason poll, but the talent gap between these two teams is going to be massive and as the college football schedule produces many more interesting games this upcoming weekend, this game will get the "one highlight" treatment on the national college football shows and then move on to the next game.

That does not stop us here at BuckeyeGrove from doing a full analysis of the Buckeyes however. It is time to put a bow on the Cincinnati win, move on to the RedHawks and just dig a little bit deeper in this week's 3-2-1 column, presented by the great folks over at Hague Water Conditioning.

1 - JK Dobbins of old is still out there

After what was a slow start in game one against Florida Atlantic, JK Dobbins has had two strong weeks and is right on the same pace that he had in 2017 as a breakout freshman star. His 193 rushing yards and 14 receiving yards were good enough to earn him co-B1G Offensive Player of the Week honors.

It was so important for Dobbins not only to prove to everyone watching but also to prove to himself that he still has 'it' and is able to thrive on the big stage. Sure, he rushed for 1,000-yards last season but it was nothing like what we saw the year prior in terms of being a special back.

Dobbins did not rely as much on the jump cut in the last couple of games as he has earlier in his career. Dobbins showed great acceleration on his 56-yard run on Saturday against the Hoosiers and then showed a great mixture of balance, power and elusiveness on his 26-yard touchdown run in the second quarter.

Stats at this point of the season can often be misleading as teams don't play equal schedules and the opponents at this point of the year are often overmatched. But with that being said, Ohio State will play the current No. 1 (Wisconsin), No. 2 (Michigan State), No. 9 (Penn State), No. 11 (Maryland) and No. 20 (Nebraska) run defenses this year in the regular season. It will be a dramatic step up from the likes of FAU, Cincinnati and Indiana as the season goes on and it is best to get all the confidence now to build up to a tough road that will be coming in October and November.

2 - The Big Ten may not be has 'Big and Bad' as we once thought

We talked about this in last week's 3-2-1 column, asking if the Big Ten could hold serve this past weekend. The answer was a resounding NO.

Maryland, Michigan State, Purdue and Illinois all lost while Penn State only beat Pitt by seven, Iowa was a point better than Iowa State and Minnesota got past Georgia Southern by just three points.

Wisconsin and Michigan were off in advance of their huge tilt this upcoming weekend while Nebraska rolled over Northern Illinois. But all-in-all, it was not a great week for the conference and Ohio State saw several ranked teams on their schedule become unranked teams on the schedule.

Not to get ahead of ourselves, but if Ohio State just keeps winning, things won't really matter all that much. If the CFP selection committee takes a one-loss SEC team over an undefeated Power Five conference champion, I will personally fly to the CFP Championship Game and picket the crookedness of the selection process.

There is a long way to go until we get to that point.

The point here is that Ohio State went into that weekend with a potential resume littered with ranked teams, and yes, if things going according to Ohio State's plans, those teams would be handed a loss by Ohio State.

And that would be fine.

What is not fine is seeing teams pick up losses to Temple, Arizona State, TCU and Eastern Michigan.

It is bad enough to make Jim Delany retire.

3 - Still not perfect in the red zone but getting much better

For the sake of fairness, there are only 20 teams that are batting a perfect 1.000 in the red zone and only 16 of those teams have played three games versus just two.

Ohio State is 10-12 in the red zone which is a much better start than where the team finished last season, 54-70 in the RZ for a .771 average and good for 115th in Division I-FBS.

Ohio State's two missed opportunities this season have come on a missed field goal against Indiana and a turnover on downs against Cincinnati from the 20-yard-line where the Buckeyes inexplicably did not go under center and just try and power for the one-yard that they needed to pick up.

The point here is that while they are scoring at a much more prolific rate, 10 touchdowns in 12 trips into the RZ, things are still not perfect.

But in some ways, you almost want to see them have those few minor issues now in the early season so it is something that they are still forced to address and work on, rather than finding everything coming too easy at this point and then struggle in those situations against a defense like Penn State, Michigan State or Michigan and not having faced any adversity.

Points are going to be more difficult to come by as the season rolls on and Ohio State is going to need to do its best to get points out of every offensive possession that reaches the 20-yard-line of the opponent. They have made some huge strides so far in 2019, but the work is not done.

1 - How interested will the Buckeyes be in Miami (Ohio)?

The game against Indiana was only semi-competitive for a quarter and then the Buckeyes turned it on for 44 points over quarters two and three and held on 51 points through the fourth quarter.

That was a road game and a league game. Now the Buckeyes have to step back into non-con play at home against a team that really does not appear to be much of a challenge in terms of what they have put on film and looking up-and-down the roster.

It is impossible to get up for 12 regular season games in a season, even if that is something you preach every minute of every day of every week of the season. At some point, there is just not much in the tank, regardless of who the foe is and what is going on.

And that is not always something that is reserved for the end of the season.

With Nebraska looming on the schedule the following week, Ohio State's first 'real' challenge on the road (sorry Indiana, just keeping it real), it would be easy to look ahead to that, or even to Michigan State the following week.

The coaches will do their best to pound the chalkboard about the game being against Miami (Ohio) this week.

While I don't see the outcome of this game being 'up in the air', it certainly could be a game that gets off to a slow start and could delay or derail some plans to give certain players half of the day off.

More than coaches harping on the issue, it is going to be on the leaders of this team to keep everyone focused on the task of playing the RedHawks and then advance to the next one.

2 - When will Jonathon Cooper come back?

There is a lot of speculation that he could be back by the Nebraska game, so that would mean one more game missed by the defensive end captain for the Buckeyes.

It is not a case of they have been hurt without his production but there have been some various bangs and bruises on the line and with guys like Taron Vincent out on the interior line, the Buckeyes sure could use one of their veterans to return to the line and make sure that a guy like Jashon Cornell can focus entirely on the interior line.

We don't expect to see Cooper suiting up for this game but if he did, it would make sense, if he is medically able to go. Get his feet wet in a game like this before heading to Nebraska and being thrust into the fire of a road league game, at night for that matter.

Of course, it is all moot if those quiet whispers of a timeline to return are incorrect and he is slated to miss more time. But we feel that he is pretty close to coming back and could be on watch for this week, potentially.

I am not expecting to see any sort of trick play akin to the one that Indiana ran at the end of the first half to score its only touchdown of the game but I feel the Buckeyes will be so far out in front in this game that both Chris Chugunov and Gunnar Hoak will see ample playing time and the Buckeyes still might be throwing at that point.

That is not to rub anything in the face of the RedHawks but the Buckeyes need to get valuable experience for these backups when they have the opportunity and the next four games on the schedule are at Nebraska, vs. Michigan State, at Northwestern and vs. Wisconsin. Not a lot of projected opportunity for back-ups time.

With not a lot of experience within the Ohio State offense for either back-up, it is critical for each of them to do more than just hand the ball off to Marcus Crowley or Steele Chambers and if given the opportunity, the Buckeyes need to give them the opportunity to run a little bit more of the offense.