It doesn’t matter who Ohio State is playing, whether it’s a conference game or a non conference game. There has not been one time Ryan Day remembers his team being plainly beat.
“Every time I've lost a game around here, it's always been us,” Day said.
He views it as the standard of who the Buckeyes are. It’s what their culture is: singular minded on what’s directly ahead and simply fight.
“This week, that has to be the focus. Nothing else,” Day said. “Simply be the best version of you, the best version of this team that we can be. And if we do that, we can take the next step forward.”
Ohio State knows some fights are harder than others.
For their final non-conference game of the season, the Buckeyes will host Akron, a team that has not recorded a winning season since 2015, a team that has won six games in the past four years, a team that last won the Mid-American Conference in 2005, a team that has only recorded 10 non-losing seasons since the program’s inception in 1975.
Ohio State last played Akron in 2011, using the combination of quarterbacks Joe Bauserman and Braxton Miller — making his college football debut — to beat the Zips, 42-0, in the season opener.
What did the Buckeyes have on this 2011 Luke Fickell-coached team that Day wants to emulate? Offensively, it had balance. Bauserman and Miller combined for 293 yards and four touchdowns on 28 pass attempts, while Carlos Hyde, Rod Smith and company combined for 224 yards on 51 carries and two scores.
In 2021, this is something the Ohio State offense has been chasing.
But it’s an offensive unit that will look a bit different Saturday night.
Day announced Thursday that redshirt freshman CJ Stroud would be used only in emergency situations, resting him against Akron for a shoulder injury that’s been lingering through each of his first three games of the season. Instead, either redshirt freshman Jack Miller III or freshman Kyle McCord will take the majority of the snaps behind center.
No matter who it is, the Ohio State pass offense will take on a unit that’s allowed opposing quarterbacks to complete 77.3% of their passes. Add a Zips rush defense that allows over five yards per rush and nearly three rushing touchdowns per game, and you have a defense that the Buckeyes could find that balance with, especially with freshman running back TreVeyon Henderson coming off a game in which he averaged more than 11 yards per carry.
Defensively, in 2011, Ohio State had pressure at the line of scrimmage, recording nine tackles for loss — including five sacks — along with giving up only 1.3 yards per carry. It stopped the run and provided pressure in the pass game.
In 2021, this is something the Ohio State defense has been chasing.
The Buckeyes are No. 13 out of 14 Big Ten teams allowing 181.7 rushing yards per game and 4.7 yards per carry. The Buckeyes are No. 13 out of 14 Big Ten teams allowing 289.7 passing yards per game.
And Ohio State will be facing an offense that will allow its defense to likely do what it's supposed to do with a running game that’s averaged 3.6 yards per carry and a unit as a whole that has scored an average of 23 points per game.
Did Ohio State’s dominant Week 1 win against Akron in 2011 change the trajectory of its overall season? No. The Buckeyes finished their only season under Fickell, 6-7 — the program’s only losing record since 1988.
If No. 10 Ohio State’s latest matchup against Akron goes how it's supposed to — opening as a 54-point spread favoring the Buckeyes — this is not a matchup to take overarching trends from.
This is a confidence-boosting game for a team that hasn’t had a lot of confidence shown over the past two weeks on either side of the ball.
In the words of Day, it’s a game that’s all about Ohio State, preparing itself to be the best team it can be in conference play, a team Columbus has not seen yet.
