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By looking at the calendar, playing against Penn State on the very last day of October should not feel all that foreign to Ohio State players and coaches. In fact, Ohio State has only played Penn State five times after October 31st since Penn State joined the league and started playing conference games in 1993 (Ohio State is 4-1 in games that took place in November against Penn State).
2020 is not a year were you can look at a calendar however and consider all things equal. The Big Ten started its season on October 24th and this upcoming weekend slate of games will be week two of an eight (plus one) game slate.
Ohio State and Penn State have only met three times before October 1st since the two teams became conference foes, and Ohio State has never played against Penn State before the 4th week of the season (2006, 2000) and the other time was in the 5th week of the season (2018).
So while the weather will feel like it is prime-time Big Ten football time, a look at the schedule would show that normally Ohio State would be playing someone from the MAC and Penn State would probably be fighting with Pitt or some other non-conference foe.
The point here is that neither team has really determined who they are quite yet with Ohio State playing four quarters of football and Penn State playing a little bit more with an overtime game against Indiana (though some would say that Penn State really didn't show up for the bottom of the first overtime frame when Michael Penix bested the Nittany Lions).
Stats are not going to tell the whole story leading into this game and teams are supposed to improve the most from week one to week two, or at least that is what the big book of coach-speak tells us.
Penn State is going to need to improve a lot and the Buckeyes are not immune from needing to get better in several aspects of their game, despite a lopsided 52-17 win over Nebraska.
We are still in those early season doldrums when it comes to the Tale of the Tape, not enough stats data to run things that we would like and we are stuck talking more about personnel than we really would like. But undeterred, we move forward and put Ohio State's biggest game of the season into focus as we tackle a fan favorite feature.
Ohio State Defensive Backs vs. Penn State QB/WR/TE
The Huskers were somewhat efficient in terms of completing passes last week against the Ohio State secondary but Nebraska's 20 pass attempts versus Ohio State 21 pass attempts were drastically different as Ohio State had 117 more yards of offense and two scores to Nebraska's zero passing touchdowns. We got our answer as to who would start alongside Shaun Wade in the secondary when Sevyn Banks, Marcus Williamson and Marcus Hooker all trotted out there for the first snap but Cameron Brown had 15 fewer snaps coming off the bench and Josh Proctor had 10 fewer than Hooker. The Buckeyes were not able to get much of a pass rush against Nebraska and that may have led to some of the success that the Huskers found but their pass selection also didn't include many advanced routes or long routes and instead was more akin to "small ball" in baseball terminology. In the previous five games of this series, the Buckeyes have only had one interception of Penn State QBs (2019) but have held PSU to just 12.8 completions on 25 attempts (51.8-percent) for an average of 176 yards per game and 1.2 passing touchdowns per game, with Trace McSorley seeing most of the action. What happened in 2015 really has no bearing over what is going to happen in 2020, but it does how that the Buckeyes through the years have had a good plan and great athletes going into this game and that should be evidenced by going 4-1 over that five-game stretch. The Buckeyes will need to find a way to continue this stretch but likely won't have the benefit of the same type of pass rush that either included a Bosa or a Young on it as in years past.
Penn State may be more reliant on the pass this year than in years past with some issues in the running back room, we will talk about that more in the next session. When we go back to the previous game against Indiana, quarterback Sean Clifford had a mixed day, on the positive side, he threw for three touchdowns and had a 69-percent completion rate on 24-35 throwing and 238 yards. But on the downside, he had a couple of bad interceptions and honestly should have been more efficient against an Indiana defense that did not have Marcelino Ball or Raheem Layne in the starting secondary. Make no mistake, Pat Freiermuth is going to be the biggest weapon on the offense, maybe outside of Clifford himself. Last season the Penn State tight end was held in check for the most part to the tune of six receptions for just 40 yards and more importantly, no touchdowns. The PSU TE did find the end zone last week against Indiana and the Buckeyes are going to have to find the best match-ups possible to try and slow down this sure-fire early round NFL tight end. Jahan Dotson may be the second most important receiver in the system and he had four catches for 94 yards and a score against Indiana as well. Beyond that? A lot of names that people are not familiar with and running backs that could be out there catching passes, but there are not four or five names that people need to focus on, instead there are two that you should get familiar with now and just hope for the best.
