Stupid Old Buckeye: Analyzing the remnants of Ohio State’s 13–10 defeat at the hands of Michigan…
For Ohio State supporters, to say that Saturday didn’t go as planned would be an epic understatement. The Buckeyes’ 13-10 loss was startling in a number of ways, including the offense, coaching, and special teams’ collective shortcomings, which Columbus had not seen in years.
This column typically accentuates the negative, because there are generally so few. This week, the column could conceivably fill all available space on the internet. As such, I’ll try to keep it broad to make for a manageable reading experience.
The following had me yelling The Expletive at The TV during The Game.
Do Things that Work; Don’t Do Things that Don’t Work
The obvious thing that most OSU fans are upset about is whatever that game plan was on offense. There was no discernible logic to a scheme that seemed to involve more running straight at Michigan’s large future NFL defensive tackles at the same time it became more and more obvious that it wouldn’t work.
Ohio State’s first scoring drive included six passes and only three runs, ending in a short field goal. The Buckeyes’ only touchdown drive of the day consisted of eight passes and one run. Both of those scoring drives the only two on the day started with a pass play. Every single drive of the second half started with a running play until the final drive with less than a minute remaining and no timeouts left.
Will Howard attempted 33 passes on Saturday, and 18 of those came on the two scoring drives plus the futile final possession.
Will Howard
Howard’s first interception turned out to be a backbreaker, although at the time, with so much clock left, it didn’t seem like it. There was no reason not to sail that ball high, where it would have gone out of play if Carnell Tate couldn’t reach it. That was a bad throw. The second pick was worse, because it took away a scoring opportunity, his man (Emeka Egbuka) wasn’t open, and the throw was well behind the receiver.
However, there was a bigger issue with Howard. The shot that he took that sent him to the medical tent looked bad. He took a shoulder hit to the head, which may have glanced off the top of his shoulder pad first, but it didn’t negate the violence of the collision. The quarterback was off the field a shockingly short amount of time to get checked for a concussion.
Once he came back on, he didn’t play the same way. This was exacerbated when the coaching staff inexplicably called another quarterback run and he took a helmet-to-helmet shot in the earhole. From that point in the game, Howard only threw two passes that looked anything like his usual form a key completion to Egbuka for a first down and a dropped pass by Tate that could have gotten Ohio State’s second-to-last drive started on the right foot.
I’m not saying Howard played concussed, but he didn’t look at all the same after the second hit to the head, and the offensive play calling was even more conservative afterwards (notably, a middle run on third-and-long prior to Jayden Fielding’s second missed field goal on the day by a team that includes Jeremiah Smith).
What I will say, however, is that if Howard was playing while concussed, everyone involved in letting him back on the field must answer for it. I don’t have an explanation for his performance after the second helmet shot, but it was noticeably worse.
After the game, Ryan Day said part of the reason they ran so often was that there was a lot of pressure on the quarterback. To that remark, I will point out that Howard was not sacked on Saturday.
Bringing Field Goals to a Touchdown Fight
Big games require big decisions, including trying to score touchdowns. Caleb Downs made a huge play to pick off Davis Warren, setting the Buckeyes up at the Michigan 16. After a(nother) first-down rush for no gain, a pass to Gee Scott also netted zero yards.
The handoff to TreVeyon Henderson on third down was a cowardly white flag with little chance of success, which was almost certainly always going to result in a field-goal attempt. Fielding missed for the second time, which is about what teams deserve for playing like that.
Speaking of Fielding…
Ohio State’s kicker entered The Game having missed only one field goal in 2024 and having never missed a try from less than 40 yards. In this one game, one in which he hit an early attempt to put Ohio State on top, he tripled his miss total for the season and failed from inside 40 for the first two times in his career.
Making both short kicks would have forced a different end game out of the Wolverines. Missing two of three was fatal.
Befuddlement and Wasteful Confusion
College coaches haven’t had the two-minute timeout (sorry, just call it the two-minute warning it’s what we’re used to and it sounds weird not to call it that) very long, so it may take some adjusting, but Day is a former NFL assistant coach. Chip Kelly is a former NFL head coach. They have no excuse not to understand how taking timeouts before the two-minute mark can save additional time.
However, Ohio State did not opt to use a timeout before that point in the game. To make matters worse, when the Buckeyes did call timeout, they failed to get the correct personnel out there and lineup up properly, taking a costly penalty by trying to take a second timeout in succession. That allowed Michigan to use more clock.
The timeout you took is for getting your house in order. Not doing so is wasting the resource you just used. It was yet another gaffe on a day filled with them.
Catch It
A key moment in the game was a 68-yard punt that seemingly didn’t have to go that far. Ohio State had just missed a field goal, with Michigan starting at its own 20. The defense held and forced a quick punt. Caleb Downs appeared to be in position to catch the line drive effort and even perhaps make a big return out of it. At worst, the Buckeyes would have been near midfield to start their drive.
However, Downs let it go, and it rolled deep into OSU territory. I can’t blame Downs much, as punt returners are supposed to let it go if there is any doubt in their mind about whether they can come up with it cleanly. In other words, he did the right thing as instructed, but I wish he hadn’t.
If he did catch it, it would likely have been a big play and wouldn’t have flipped the field, helping the Wolverines, who held on the ensuing defensive series, took over in great field position, and kicked a 54-yard field goal on their next possession as a result of flipping the field.
It did not help that Ohio State’s coaching staff turtled on the possession, which started at the OSU 7-yard line. That possession consisted of a 2-yard run by Henderson, an incomplete pass, and a Henderson run for a loss of yardage.
More Field Position Woes
Henderson erred on the second-half kickoff, scrambling to cover the ball at his own 6-yard line, putting Ohio State in a bad spot again after regaining momentum late in the first half. That drive was somewhat successful anyway, due to calling seven pass plays out of 10 total, as the Buckeyes drove it down to the Michigan 38-yard line.
If you’re keeping score, I have now accounted for 25 of Howard’s 33 pass attempts on just four drives, including three of the team’s most successful ones on the day. I guess I just see a pattern that somehow escaped the notice of both Day and Kelly.
The drive bogged down at that point, as it was a choice between a 55-yard field goal or going for it on fourth-and-7. Day would go for that first down against Purdue. He would go for it against Northwestern. He would go for it against Michigan State. To summarize, he would go for that first down in most cases.
He did not go for it against Michigan. Scared money don’t make money.
