COLUMBUS, Ohio – Buckeyes fans woke up on Sunday with some mixed feelings about Saturday’s 45-21 win over Florida Atlantic. Sure, the team came out playing nearly flawless football on the offensive side of the ball for the first four drives. Yes, the defense held the Owls in negative yardage for much of the game and under 20 yards in the first half in total offense.
On the other side, Ohio State did end up yielding 21 points. The Buckeyes also did not find the end zone, or even really come close to it, from the 6:50 mark of the first quarter until the 2:37 mark of the third quarter, six empty drives (not including the end of the first half where the Buckeyes allowed the clock to run out).
There is something to be said about a first game of the season and programs like Florida State, Tennessee, Purdue and Missouri are among major programs that would love to have Ohio State’s problems now, trying to compartmentalize an up-and-down performance that resulted in a win.
Now that everyone has had a chance to let things sink in for a little bit, we go back and look at a few of the key numbers from the game as we start to wrap up Florida Atlantic week and prepare to move on to Cincinnati.
3.25 – The average number of plays it took Ohio State to score in its first four drives of the game. None of the drives were longer than four plays and the longest drive was the first one in terms of time of possession at just 1:53. The other three drives check in at 36, 37 and 62 seconds in length.
5 – The number of touchdowns that Justin Fields accounted for. That is a record for any played in program history in their debut with the Buckeyes.
7 – The number of career games for Chase Young recording multiple quarterback sacks. He was credited with 1.5 sacks against FAU on Saturday.
20 – The consecutive number of Ohio State season-opening wins, the longest active streak in the nation (in FBS). The last time that Ohio State lost in an opener would be back in the 1999 season when the Buckeyes dropped a 23-12 game to Miami in the Kick-off Classic in East Rutherford (N.J.).
60 – Ohio State had 60 yards of total offense in the 2nd quarter after amassing more than 200 yards of total offense in the 1st quarter. Little went right offensively in that frame with the Buckeyes committing their first major penalty of the game with a questionable offensive pass interference call on Chris Olave and JK Dobbins fumbling the ball and turning it over to FAU deep in Ohio State’s territory. Would we be signing a different tune today if neither of these would have happened? Without Olave’s OPI call, the Buckeyes would have had at worst a field goal attempt on that drive and without Dobbins’ fumble, the Buckeyes might have held FAU off the scoreboard a little longer. It is all a moot point now, but that second quarter is one to forget for the offense.
69 – The number of quarters (there are two overtime periods counted in there as well) since Ohio State has scored 28 points in any quarter of a game. The last time that the Buckeyes put up 28 in a frame was against Illinois in the 2017 when the Buckeyes scored 28 in the first quarter against the Illini in a 52-14 win. Ohio State also scored 28 points in a quarter two other times that season, in the second quarter against Rutgers (56-0 W) and in the second quarter against UNLV (54-21 W).
