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It has been quite some time since the Buckeyes have been back-to-back underdogs, the year was 2014 to be exact when the Buckeyes were underdogs three weeks in a row, to Wisconsin, Alabama and then Oregon.

We all know what happened that season.

Now, that does not mean anything today, other than the fact that the oddsmakers felt that the Buckeyes were not going to get past Clemson, which they did. And now oddsmakers don't feel that Ohio State will get past Alabama, and that page in the record book still needs to be written.

These are two of the bluest of bluebloods set to play, despite the fact that neither of these teams wear a single thread of blue, outside of a bowl patch in the post season.

Ohio State leads the nation with a .731 win percentage while Alabama is No. 3 with a .729 win percentage. Alabama leads the world in national championships with 17 while Ohio State claims eight. Ohio State is second in the nation in all-time wins with 931 (recognized by the NCAA) while Alabama is only three wins behind at 928. Ohio State is No. 1 in the nation with 84 first-round NFL Draft Picks and Bama is 4th with 68.

We could go on and on and on.

But we already have talked about a lot of this building up to the game and there is no reason to keep hamming the point home. These are two very good teams. Each have some weaknesses, and ultimately it is going to come down to who plays the best game and who is able to outscore the other team as both defenses have had moments of vulnerability over the course of the season but with these being the only two undefeated teams left standing, obviously nobody has been able to take full advantage.

Yet.

Someone is going to win this game, why not the Buckeyes?

But it is going to take a lot for the Buckeyes to get past this team, the Tide are No. 1 for a reason and a healthy favorite at that.

We break this down as we go to the Tale of the Tape.

Well, we may as well get to the biggest concern in this game, the Ohio State secondary against the Alabama passing offense. Ohio State has seen a lot of yards against it through the season and Alabama has one of the best passing offenses in recent memory and the scary thing is the numbers could/should/would be higher if the Tide were tested in more games. We will talk about the Alabama side of things in another second, but we want to talk about Ohio State first. The Buckeyes saw Clemson throw for 400 yards in the Sugar Bowl but a lot of that was with the Tigers down three scores and Ohio State did a good job of bending and not breaking more or less, at least after the first 14 points of the game where Ohio State fans were going through another bout of, 'Oh no, not again'. The Buckeyes managed to hold the Tigers to just four scores, which is well above the 22 points per game that Ohio State is giving up this season but well below the number of points that Clemson was accustomed to scoring. Ohio State went with Josh Proctor as its single-high safety in this game with Marcus Hooker warming up with the second team at a corner position. Was this one of Shaun Wade's best games in terms of locking everyone down? No, not really. But there have been a lot of people who have taken shots at the Ohio State junior corner this season and it may be okay to say that he was playing too soft on the receiver who he drew, he didn't have any real big breakdowns in this game. Clemson threw at a 69-percentage clip, which is higher than anyone wants to give up but when you are going against a Heisman finalist, what do you expect? This was not Rocky Lombardi or Adrian Martinez that Ohio State was facing here. It is troubling that Ohio State has given up 400 or more yards twice this season in the throwing game but in those two games, the Buckeyes have given up minus-one yard rushing (Indiana) and 44 yards rushing (Clemson). So there is something to be said about a trade off, but Ohio State still has that memory of IU scoring five passing touchdowns, much of that in the second half of that game. And this Alabama passing game is significantly better than anything coming out of Bloomington (Ind.) right about now. The Buckeyes are going to have to find a couple of stops on defense, much like what Ole Miss attempted to do with Bama earlier in the season, score on pretty much every drive and hope to have more points at the end. That is not saying that this secondary is incapable of slowing down this offense, but right now, I am not sure if the Dallas Cowboys could slow down this Alabama offense with any consistency. One final note, finish your interceptions Josh Proctor, you have great instincts, but need to work on securing that pick.

This 2020 Alabama team is throwing for about 50 more yards per game than its 2014 predecessor that the Buckeyes faced in the national semifinals and has five more passing touchdowns total despite playing two less games to this point. The passing numbers are quite obscene if we are being honest and should be even more obscene if the Tide were pressed and needed to throw the ball more in close games. But that could be said for most good teams, the part of calling off the dogs. The Tide has some serious dogs if we are being honest with ourselves and while we normally start this section by talking about the quarterback, we are going to receivers. DeVonta Smith has 1,641 receiving yards and 20 touchdowns. 13 teams in the Big Ten have fewer than 20 passing touchdowns. Ohio State is the only one, with 21. And sure, the Big Ten played anywhere from five to nine games, but we are talking about entire teams against one player, a special player at that. Speaking of special players, this was supposed to be Jaylen Waddle's team, and he was lost to injury early in the year and was supposed to miss the entire season, well... he is practicing. That could be some window dressing or it could be an offensive undressing if he is back. He likely would have had much of those Smith numbers if he played more than five games, and during those games he was averaging 111.4 yards per game and had four touchdowns of his own. Throw in John Metchie and a talented pass-catching running back in Najee Harris and it is downright obscene what this offense can do. And who is throwing it? Mac Jones came into this season with some doubters and I am going to admit that I was among the biggest doubters, calling him a system quarterback and a placeholder for bigger and better things to come. Whoops. He is completing 77-percent of his passes, has 36 touchdowns, only four picks and is averaging 336.3 yards per game in the air, again it could be more if that is what was needed. Alabama has not faced a top-30 passing efficiency defense this season with Notre Dame coming in at No. 34. Ohio State is No. 57, which would make the Buckeyes the 5th best defense in that category on the Alabama schedule. But don't lose sight that some of these numbers for these other SEC teams are bad because Bama MADE them bad. Alabama passed for fewer than 300 yards in just four games, in two of those games, the Tide rushed for five and six touchdowns to complement the passing numbers. One of those games was against Mississippi State in a game where the Bulldogs did not leave their doghouse and scored a grand total of zero points. The final game was against Notre Dame and while people will look at the margin of that game and say the Irish played the Tide close, they did not. Alabama had control of that game from the early moments and while the points were not significant, this game was never really in question.