Happy Monday everyone.
Grab a cup a coffee and get comfortable. There's a lot to get into.
It still really is a shock.
Ohio State lost to Michigan. Ohio State will not play for a Big Ten title. Ohio State is likely out of a chance at a national title.
This is not normal for this football program.
And head coach Ryan Day, after a pulverizing beatdown by the Wolverines, could not believe it either.
Sitting at a table in the postgame interview room at Michigan Stadium, his eyes were dazed, the reality seeping in with each answer: the reality setting in.
Day had lost for the first time in Big Ten play.
Day was lost.
“There’s not much to say because you don’t plan for this type of thing,” Day said. ”We’ll have to get on the bus, head back to Columbus and figure out what’s next.”
No, Ohio State never plans to lose any games it plays. But the thought of losing never really crossed its mind on the bus ride to Ann Arbor.
Look at the context of this game: The Buckeyes came in as confident as they have ever been, destroying a top-10 Michigan State team at home with the best offense in the country and a defensive front that could stop any running game in the country. The issues of penalties, of offenses taking advantage of soft spots in zone coverage, were seemingly obsolete, gone, evaporated like the memory of Ohio State’s loss to Oregon in Week 2.
Ohio State was one of the two best teams in the country.
Sure, hindsight is 20/20, but Ohio State looked like a team Saturday that felt it could rely on its placement in the overall narrative in the college football landscape along with the control it had over the rivalry to get by a trip to Ann Arbor.
Ohio State knew the stakes. It knew how important the game was.
It seemed like Ohio State was looking ahead because The Game was already a given
And masked behind answers of “this is the biggest rivalry in sports” was a feeling like this game, The Game, was theirs for the taking; that it was not an if the Buckeyes would win, but by how many.
That’s why Ohio State looked so unprepared for Saturday’s game: unable to stop the run — something Michigan had done all season — unable to stop Aidan Hutchinson or David Ojabo on the outside.
And I’m sure these were the thoughts rattling around Day’s brain as he participated in the last tradition of the weekend: the three-and-a-half hour bus ride home.
Read the rest of the column here.
