COLUMBUS — Offensive coordinator Kevin Wilson was one of the last Ohio State coaches to leave the field on Saturday night. As he walked up the tunnel with tight end Mitch Rossi, Wilson stopped, turned to a couple of reporters and asked after the Buckeyes’ 21-10 win against Notre Dame and offered this question:
“Who said it had to be a track meet?”
Well, if you came in thinking Ohio State was going to win, you probably had a track meet in mind.
That’s what Ryan Day’s Buckeyes do. They throw the ball around the yard. They score points in buckets. They put it on teams early and cruise. And when the aerial assault hasn’t been fully operational, things have tended to get a little sideways.
Maybe that’s why Day looked downright giddy as he walked in for his postgame press conference.
“We wanted to be known as something other than just talented,” Day said. “I hope that showed tonight, that we can be.”
Said another way, Ohio State probably wanted to be known as something more than a throw-first, sometimes thrown-only, 7-on-7 team that can't win when games turn physical. Front-running, finesse, soft — any of those words would have been fair criticisms of Day’s team last year. Had the Buckeyes played like that against Notre Dame, they likely would have left Ohio Stadium with a loss.
The 2021 Ohio State team was not equipped to win a game like Saturday’s. Against the more rugged, physical teams, the teams that managed to take the air out of the ball a bit and force the game to be played in a bandbox, the Buckeyes were not always game. Winning in the fashion it did on Saturday guarantees them nothing moving forward, but it was an improvement for a team that too often couldn’t set the terms up front when everything wasn’t going their way, particularly on offense.
It’s a win that should pay dividends down the road.
“We have to be able to win that way,” Day said. “We have to find ways to win like that. That was something that we spent a lot of time in the offseason, we have to run the ball on offense and we have to stop the run on defense.”
On a night when the offense lost top receiver Jaxon Smith-Njigba early on and finished with 6.6 yards per passing attempt — its third-lowest mark since Day has been head coach — the running backs and offensive line finished off the game. A 14-play, 95-yard drive that ended with the Buckeyes taking a 21-10 lead inside of five minutes to play featured 10 rushing plays for 64 yards. Miyan Williams was responsible for 49 of those yards on the ground by himself.
It was a throwback drive, damn near the entire length of the field and virtually all via keeping the ball on the ground. Williams ran hard, the line blocked well and Ohio State leaned on Notre Dame to put the game away.
Was it a rushing night for the record books? Hardly. OSU finished with 172 yards on 35 carries, just a 4.9 average when you factor in sacks. But it also didn’t have a run go for a negative gain. All but one of the non-sack rushing attempts went for a positive gain.
And on the other side, save for one long Notre Dame scoring drive, Ohio State’s defensive line was knocking back the Irish front to the point that the Buckeyes were controlling things on both lines of scrimmage by the game’s end.
“I thought they definitely displayed toughness,” defensive coordinator Jim Knowles said. “That’s physical and mental control of the line of scrimmage, controlling the run game and being able to perform under duress and fit the different runs.”
There was havoc created in Notre Dame’s backfield, as Ohio State finished with three sacks and six tackles for loss. That’s more TFLs than the Buckeyes had in three games against Oregon, Michigan and Utah last year combined.
It wasn’t a defensive masterclass. Notre Dame hit a couple of big plays. Missed tackles and penalties need to be cleaned up, a common refrain coming off an opener. There’s room for growth, but the defense also stymied the Notre Dame rushing attack to the tune of only 2.5 yards per carry (including sacks) in a game where the Irish were trying to play keep away.
In a bit of an ironic development, Ohio State had good showings in the two areas of hyper-focus during the offseason. It ran the ball when it mattered, and it stopped the run. And yet, you come away from an 11-point win feeling like something was left on the table.
That’s not a bad thing.
You won’t find too many people worried about Ohio State’s ability to find its footing in the passing game moving forward, and Day made it sound like Smith-Njigba — who tried to play through whatever was ailing him — will be back in short order. The track meets will come.
What was far less of a certainty was the team’s ability to win games that look like Saturday’s.
Mid-game, that was still in question.
Notre Dame put together a 10-play scoring drive early in the second quarter that featured six running plays. On the other side of the ball, the Buckeyes' offense couldn’t get out of first gear and seemed too pass-happy. We’ve seen that movie before. It felt like the Irish were taking over on both lines of scrimmage, the kind of game that the Buckeyes rarely handled well last year.
Then, after going three-and-out on three pass plays on its first drive of the second half, 18 of Ohio State’s final 32 plays were run plays that netted 101 yards and 5.6 yards per carry. The defense limited the Irish to no points, 23 net rushing yards and 3.6 yards per play from that point. Notre Dame was limited to only 20 plays in the second half.
It was defense and ball-control, not a fireworks display of a passing attack, that won Ohio State the game.
And it’s important for this team to see that it can win games that way.
“We can always throw the ball,” Day said, “we know that. But if we want to get to where we need to be and reach our goals, we’re gonna have to do those two things. Tonight we did it.”
