COLUMBUS, Ohio - Ohio State will soon return to their regularly scheduled meetings and practices to help them prepare for their next opponent, but for a few short hours, the Buckeyes remain on break during the team’s second off week this season.
This break comes at a pivotal moment in Ohio State’s season fresh off the win over Wisconsin. The Buckeyes are entering the back half of their schedule which, following contests against 3-6 Maryland and 2-7 Rutgers, will face their two toughest regular season games against Penn State and Michigan.
The win over then-No. 13 Wisconsin gave the Buckeyes that quality win they had been searching for this year. While none of the teams on top of the polls have faced a murderer's row of competition this season, it’s been a fair knock on Ohio State that they haven’t really been tested this season, but the domination of the Badgers should help to quell those concerns.
As the Buckeyes prepare to enter this back stretch on the heels of the first College Football Playoff Top 25 Poll releasing on Tuesday, Ohio State will be carrying some serious momentum into their matchup with Maryland, but Jeff Okudah doesn’t want the Buckeyes losing focus during the off week.
“I think it's really important to maintain that focus just because how you've seen in the past, one week can ruin your whole season,” Okudah said, “so we're trying to, I guess, go against Maryland with just a fresh mindset and just try to go end the week 1-0.”
One way to keep focus during the first off week was for the players to each work on a list of three things they did well through the first six games and three areas they need to improve in. While the Buckeyes aren’t doing that this time around given the close proximity to the previous off week, everyone is still working this week to find things they can work on.
Eight games gives Ohio State’s coaches a pretty good idea of what the team is good at and what they may need to work on as they approach the final four games of the regular season, so the focus of this second off week will be identifying some of those issues.
“I was talking to Coach [Jeff] Hafley and he just said we want to just polish up our fundamentals,” Okudah said. “You know, over the course of a season things kind of slip away from you, so just fine tuning all those little things and just put that in kind of the bank moving forward.”
The extra time this week to look back will certainly help the Buckeyes in preparing for future games, but what will help possibly more than anything is a week off to let their bodies rest after a tough and gritty game against Wisconsin.
More noticeably so than after any other game this season, Justin Fields and numerous Buckeyes trodded slowly into the postgame room after their beatdown of the Badgers, and it was clearly a physically tough affair for Ohio State.
Jonathan Cooper, Austin Mack and Teradja Mitchell were among 14 inactives for the Buckeyes against Wisconsin, and it’s likely that list would have grown if they had a game this week, so an additional off week provides an opportunity to regroup and heal before a challenging final third of the season.
“I think it's a big bonus. I mean, it's the first time that I've had two bye weeks especially so close together,” Okudah said. “So you want to give a lot of guys a chance to recover their bodies. You know, over the course of a season, fall camp, people tend to get injured so having that extra week to recover before you head into the last four game stretch is really big.”
While Okudah emphasized how the Buckeyes are focusing in on Maryland, it’s hard for him or anyone else to deny that they’ve had a strong stretch of games that culminated with their win over Wisconsin.
It’ll be important to take things one game at a time, especially so once Penn State and Michigan appear on the schedule, but Okudah is also excited right now about how this team is trending and how it bodes for the rest of the season.
“I think the confidence level is really, really high. Like I said, earlier on in the year, we're looking for redemption,” Okudah said. “So to get a chance to go against these teams and kind of show we're able to do it week in and week out, it's really big. So now we're just focused on going forward and playing a really good game against Maryland.”
