Ohio State Buckeyes Football – Page 15

The lesson Penn State can teach Wisconsin against Ohio State

Thoughts on the Wisconsin Badgers’ game against the Ohio State Buckeyes, viewed through the lens of the Penn State Nittany Lions.

As the Wisconsin Badgers prepare to face the Ohio State Buckeyes in the Big Ten Championship Game, they should study how the Penn State Nittany Lions’ defense played the Ohio State offense on Nov. 23.

The Badgers played an excellent first half against Ohio State’s offense on Oct. 26, but lost ground in the second half. Wisconsin’s pass coverage was solid in that game. Its run defense deteriorated in the second half, but for a reason which wasn’t the defense’s fault: The Badgers lost strength on their rush defense after halftime in Columbus largely because the UW offense wasn’t able to stay on the field and keep the defense fresh. What can the Badgers do even better on defense this time around?

Look at the cover photo for this story, which provides a starting point for the Wisconsin defense. Penn State’s Trent Gordon rakes the ball away from Ohio State receiver Chris Olave. The Penn State defensive approach against Ohio State was, in many ways, based on raking. In baseball, “raking” means hitting the ball very hard. In basketball, raking refers to hitting the arm, not the ball, when trying to get a steal on defense. In football, raking refers to prying the ball out of the hands of an offensive player. Penn State raked extremely well against Ohio State.

The Nittany Lions raked in one-on-one receiver-cornerback matchups on the perimeter to deny long-ball touchdown passes from Justin Fields. Penn State raked the ball out of Ohio State ball-carriers, causing the multiple fumbles which enabled Penn State to rally from a 21-0 deficit and create a 21-17 score before Ohio State regrouped and won by a 28-17 count.

It is true that Wisconsin didn’t allow Ohio State to do very much in the first half on Oct. 26. Wisconsin is capable of playing another half at that same level, but as was the case in late October, it was really hard to ask Wisconsin’s defense to play 60 complete minutes against an offense as good as Ohio State’s. The Buckeyes are loaded. They will score some points. They will move the ball in some portions of a game. Stopping them is not a reasonable ask. Containing them — holding them to 28 points, as Penn State did — is the goal. Wisconsin can’t win a 49-42 game. It CAN win a 31-28 game.

How can Wisconsin do that? The Badgers might get one or two three-and-outs in this game, but the best path to containing Ohio State’s offense is getting a few turnovers so that the time of possession tally can shift in Wisconsin’s favor. If the Badgers get help from their offense, a raking defense — which collects turnovers and denies long-ball passes from Fields — can win this game.

Remember that in the 2017 Big Ten Championship Game, Wisconsin gave up 449 yards but collected three takeaways against Ohio State. That is pretty much what the Badgers should shoot for: a game in which the Buckeyes gain yards but not nearly as many points as the yardage total might seem to suggest. Raking — on long passes and whenever an Ohio State ball-carrier holds the ball like a jug of milk — is the lesson Penn State offers to Wisconsin. The Badgers should heed the Nittany Lions’ advice.

2017 Big Ten title game offers lessons for Wisconsin vs. Ohio State

Sizing up the 2019 Big Ten Championship Game between the Wisconsin Badgers and the Ohio State Buckeyes through the prism of 2017.

The 2017 Big Ten Championship Game between the Wisconsin Badgers and the Ohio State Buckeyes does not offer a perfect template for Wisconsin as it prepares for a 2019 rematch in Indianapolis. However, several components of this game show the Badgers what they need to replicate on Saturday night.

The best things Wisconsin did in that 27-21 loss to Urban Meyer’s Buckeyes: First of all, the Badgers produced takeaways which had a high level of impact. Andrew Van Ginkel produced a pick-six when the Wisconsin offense was floundering in the first quarter. Two other takeaways were part of a gallant defensive effort in which Ohio State constantly moved the ball — 449 total yards — but didn’t score 30 points.

Second, Wisconsin’s defense stood tall in the red zone. Ohio State twice settled for field goals inside the Badgers’ 11-yard line. That was another reason the Buckeyes finished with only 27 points instead of a much higher number on the scoreboard.

Third, Wisconsin’s run-pass mix was 41 passes to 32 rushes. That isn’t an ideal run-pass mix, but do remember that Ohio State jumped out to a 21-7 lead. Wisconsin had to throw a lot more than it would have liked in this game. To throw only nine times more than the Badgers rushed the ball is an achievement under those circumstances. Wisconsin knew that even though it was trailing, it had to rest its defense and rely on what worked best.

YES, the late-game drive in that 2017 Big Ten title tilt wasn’t good, and YES, Wisconsin needed downfield passes in that game which didn’t emerge in crucial moments. That was a pronounced flaw of the evening in Indy. However, in terms of a 60-minute approach, Paul Chryst’s plan was sound. The plan wasn’t adjusted to the extent it needed to be at the end of the game, but the larger whole was not misguided. It was fundamentally the right way to play Ohio State under those circumstances. The key detail which supports this thesis: Wisconsin, despite an offense which frankly wasn’t all that good in that game (under 300 total yards, only 14 points scored since seven were produced by the pick-six of J.T. Barrett), nevertheless kept the ball for 34 minutes. If Wisconsin had kept the ball for only 30 minutes, the score is probably more lopsided in Ohio State’s favor.

Wisconsin didn’t do a number of things well — we’ll have more on that in a separate post — but in terms of takeaways, red-zone defense, and time of possession, the Badgers checked some of the boxes they will need to check off in 2019 this coming weekend.

One fact magnifies Wisconsin and Ohio State before B1G title game

A simple fact shows how successful the Wisconsin Badgers and Ohio State Buckeyes really are.

Simple facts can convey profound truths. Such is the case before the Wisconsin Badgers face the Ohio State Buckeyes in the 2019 Big Ten Championship Game in Indianapolis on Saturday. Let’s put it very plainly: With Paul Chryst and Ryan Day representing their teams in Lucas Oil Stadium, Wisconsin and Ohio State are the only two Big Ten programs which have made the Big Ten Championship Game with more than one coach.

Wisconsin, of course, is the leader among Big Ten programs in this regard: Three separate coaches have led the Badgers to Indianapolis. No other Big Ten program can make that claim. Bret Bielema and Gary Andersen preceded Chryst, who — on his own — has made three Big Ten title games, as many as Michigan State’s Mark Dantonio. Only Urban Meyer has made more Big Ten title games (four) than Chryst.

Ryan Day enables Ohio State to be the only program other than Wisconsin which has placed multiple coaches in the Big Ten Championship Game. These two programs — UW and OSU — are the leaders in overall Big Ten title game appearances, and they are the only two with multiple coaches in this game. If that isn’t a strong indication of sustained quality as a program, nothing is.

What is also worth noting, as we assess the significance of Wisconsin and Ohio State reaching Indianapolis with multiple head coaches, is that while Ryan Day has been superb this season, he is doing this with Urban Meyer’s players. This doesn’t diminish what Day has done this year. Yet, it is an obvious challenge — and rite of passage — for head coaches at elite programs to move past successes with inherited talent, and arrive at a point when they can say they built their own successes.

Yes, Day’s successes in 2019 are his own to the extent that he has coached this team. He has occupied a leadership position. He has carried the responsibility of guiding Ohio State through a full season. Yet, we all know that it’s one thing to coach inherited talent to the top. Coaching your own talent to the top is the higher and fuller measure of coaching prowess.

Paul Chryst and Wisconsin have attained that. Ryan Day and Ohio State? We will have to wait until the next decade to truly find out.

Big Ten Championship Game: Wisconsin is part of a B1G trinity

Reflections on the Wisconsin Badgers’ sixth appearance in the Big Ten Championship Game.

Minnesota is in the rearview mirror. Let’s now move to the Big Ten Championship Game this upcoming Saturday against Ohio State. We have plenty of time to unpack numerous angles related to this contest. Let’s start with some aspects of Big Ten Championship Game history at the end of the first decade for this standalone event, which began in 2011.

It is fitting that Wisconsin and Michigan State played in the first Big Ten Championship Game, with Ohio State stuck for one season between the end of the Jim Tressel era and the beginning of the Urban Meyer era. Ohio State’s 2011 mess and its 2012 lack of eligibility for postseason play are why the Badgers have the most Big Ten Championship Game appearances at the end of the decade, with six. A 6 of 9 “shooting line” is 67 percent from the field, so to speak. That will do. It speaks to Wisconsin’s consistency and dependability as a program.

The surprise is not that Wisconsin has been consistent. It was consistent in the late 1990s. It was consistent in the several seasons immediately preceding the 2011 campaign, the first year with a Big Ten Championship Game. Wisconsin has generally been a 10-win program over the past two decades, with a brief period of drift in the early 2000s and an occasional ho-hum season (such as 2018 for Paul Chryst) in which a lot of things went wrong.

No, the surprise is not that Wisconsin has been consistent, or that Michigan State and Ohio State have also made multiple return trips to the Big Ten Championship Game in this decade, which is about to end. The surprise is that no one else in this conference has been particularly consistent at the higher end of performance.

Yes, Penn State has become fairly strong in recent seasons, and the Nittany Lions could become the team which makes an upward move among the Big Ten’s best teams in the 2020s. Yes, Michigan has not been terrible; its biggest sin under Jim Harbaugh is that it can’t match the juggernaut Urban assembled, and Ryan Day sustained this year, at Ohio State. Nevertheless, Michigan has not been relentlessly consistent in the way it used to be under Lloyd Carr. Yes, Minnesota could become the fresh new face in the top tier of the Big Ten in the coming decade.

Yet, all of them haven’t truly maintained a regular annual home in the top tier of the Big Ten. The first nine seasons of divisional play and a Big Ten Championship Game reveal that Wisconsin, Michigan State, and Ohio State are the ONLY three programs to make the Big Ten title game more than once.

Does that surprise you? Maybe the current pecking order in the Big Ten — with a second Wisconsin-Ohio State B1G championship showdown in three seasons — casts that statement in a different light. Maybe it is so expected that Ohio State and Wisconsin will win their respective divisions that the above fact doesn’t resonate very strongly. Fair enough.

Yet, I ask you to pause for a moment. Just absorb this question and what it means: In 2011, when the first Big Ten Championship Game was played, were you prepared to think that Michigan would not play in ANY of the first nine B1G title games?

Were you prepared to think that Nebraska would play in only one, and go seven years (and counting) without so much as a division title? Were you prepared to think after 2015 that Iowa would not get back to this game in the remainder of the decade?

The fact that we have had nine Big Ten title games (including this upcoming 2019 edition) means that 18 berths in the Big Ten Championship Game have been allotted in the past nine seasons. The leaderboard looks like this:

Wisconsin, 6 berths
Ohio State, 5
Michigan State, 3
Nebraska, Iowa, Penn State, and Northwestern, all with 1 apiece

The top two aren’t surprising at all, and in 2012, Ohio State would have qualified had it been eligible. The surprise is how few Big Ten programs have returned to Indy… and Michigan State, after so many strong seasons, is a program in decline, with Mark Dantonio’s career seemingly out of gas.

Wisconsin and Ohio State, it can reasonably be argued, are not only the two most reliable programs in the Big Ten; they might be the ONLY reliable programs in this conference.

Georgia football: CFB fan outlines nightmare playoff scenario

The College Football Playoff Committee released their top 25 last night with the Georgia Bulldogs checking in at number four. With rivalry week left in the season, fans can still put together some nightmare scenarios for the CFP Committee. This …

This scenario is far from a nightmare for the Georgia Bulldogs. UGA is a lock in this situation:

Readers have fun role-playing #CFBPlayoff scenarios: pic.twitter.com/XpmxeozdeY

— RedditCFB (@RedditCFB) November 27, 2019

What four teams would you pick? I think these three are locks in this particular scenario:

1. Clemson

2. UGA

3. Minnesota

Beyond Minnesota, who’d feature wins over Wisconsin, Penn State, and Ohio State, I think LSU would get the nod over Ohio State, Utah, Alabama and Baylor. It’d depend how the conference championship went. I’m assuming each championship game is close in this scenario. LSU has slightly better wins than Ohio State. Utah and Baylor’s soft non-conference schedules comes back to bite them. LSU’s head to head win over Alabama would be too much for the Crimson Tide to overcome.

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The narrow but real College Football Playoff path for Wisconsin

The Wisconsin Badgers aren’t completely dead in the College Football Playoff race. Here is how they can still get in.

The Wisconsin Badgers seemed to be 100-percent done and dusted in the pursuit of a College Football Playoff berth a few weeks ago. However, as our friend Yesh Ginsburg at Buckeyes Wire shows in his latest College Football Playoff analysis column, the Badgers aren’t dead yet.

Here’s Yesh in an excerpt from his column at Buckeyes Wire:

11-2 Wisconsin: The Badgers could have four Top 15 wins when all is said and done. If Michigan beats Ohio State and then Wisconsin beats the Buckeyes, the Badgers will have an incredible resume. They would need a bit of help from Auburn, Oregon, and maybe the Big 12 to get in the Playoff, but an 11-2 Wisconsin team will be in the thick of things–if Ohio State loses to Michigan. (I would honestly take 11-2 Wisconsin over 11-1 Alabama, but I doubt the selection committee will.)

Yes, Wisconsin has to focus on what it can control. Yes, Wisconsin needs to put its goggles on and focus on handling the Minnesota Golden Gophers this Saturday, and punch that ticket to Indianapolis for December 7. Yes, the chances of getting into the playoff will ultimately require beating big, bad Ohio State. No one is saying or implying that any of this is likely.

Yet, it is possible, and if you remember crazy college football seasons such as 2007, you know crazier things have happened. (In 2007, South Florida, Kansas, and Boston College were ranked No. 2! Kansas played Missouri for a division championship in the Big 12! Rutgers came close to making a BCS bowl game! Kansas won the Orange Bowl! The national champion lost two games, one of them being to Kentucky!)

Let’s realize that Oregon losing to Arizona State is the key puzzle piece which fell in Wisconsin’s favor. Had Oregon and Utah been 11-1 heading into a Pac-12 Championship Game, the winner would have been guaranteed to finish 12-1. Now, that’s no longer the case. Oregon beating Utah would put Oregon at 11-2.

An 11-2 Wisconsin team as Big Ten champion with a win over Ohio State could — and probably would — get in over Oregon. If Oklahoma loses to Oklahoma State but then beats Baylor in the Big 12 Championship Game, an 11-2 Wisconsin team, as the Big Ten champion with a win over Ohio State, could — and probably would — get in over two-loss Oklahoma.

The other obvious piece which has to fall into place for Wisconsin: Michigan must beat Ohio State. The Badgers could handle OSU in Indianapolis, but if OSU is sitting there at 12-1 and UW is 11-2, with the two teams splitting head-to-head matchups, Wisconsin’s conference championship would not override OSU’s better overall resume. I reemphasize that the Illinois loss was and is a crusher for Wisconsin. If the Badgers hadn’t lost that game, they would have so many better postseason prospects. Nevertheless, Wisconsin still isn’t done.

Jim Harbaugh needs to be Wisconsin’s helper. Then the Badgers have to do their part later on Saturday afternoon. Let’s see what happens. Again, more improbable things have happened in college football history. Badger fans are hoping that the spirit of 2007 fills the air this upcoming weekend.

Ranking the Ohio State-Michigan games so far this decade

On the doorstep of the final meeting in the 2010s, let’s take a look back at how the last nine OSU-UM meetings have stacked up.

The build-up, the quirks of each fan base, and yes, the game. Ahem, “The Game.”

The Ohio State-Michigan rivalry, 102 meetings into the historic matchup, is one of the most anticipated and entertaining games on the college football calendar every year. The battle at the Big House or the Horseshoe each November can act as time-warp of reflections into football history—Western Conferences, helmets made of leather, Woody, Bo, and Earl Bruce’s hat—while also giving young Wolverine and Buckeye fans the building-block reasoning to dislike the other.

The all-time series currently sits at 58-50-6, in favor of the Wolverines. And while the 1990’s matchups induced more headaches than not for the Scarlet and Gray fan base—those nights waking in a cold sweat and screaming “Tim Biakabutuka!”—the turn of the millennium has been less brutal and more Brutus.

On the doorstep of the final meeting in the 2010s, as the rivalry opens a new chapter, the dominance has stayed in the Buckeyes’ favor. How will it end?

While we await that answer, let’s take a look back at how the last nine meetings have stacked up.

9. November 27, 2010

Ironically, there were a few things that made the 2010 game in Columbus seem like it was upside-down. The Buckeyes came out in 1942 throwback uniforms—the second straight year going Nike-nutty—while also featuring brand-new gloves. Why does this matter? Well, the uniforms kept fans preoccupied with Google searches while the gloves got some shine during a few celebration penalties thought to be nods to Jay-Z and LeBron—which caused more Google searches.

Those were the most memorable elements from that day.

Overall, the game was a snooze-fest. The Buckeyes, with a balanced offense led by Terrell Pryor and Dan Herron, had it wrapped up by halftime. They added another 13 points in the third quarter just for good measure and ended the game—and really, Rich Rodriguez’s tenure at UM—with a score of 37-7.

And the win was eventually vacated…

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Wisconsin, not Ohio State, is Nebraska’s main Big Ten roadblock

A reminder about the brief period of Big Ten history connecting the Wisconsin Badgers and the Nebraska Cornhuskers

It is not breaking news to note that the Wisconsin Badgers, not the Ohio State Buckeyes (or Penn State Nittany Lions, or Michigan Wolverines), represent the foremost roadblock to progress for the Nebraska Cornhuskers. As the latest Wisconsin-Nebraska game approaches this Saturday, it is worth offering a reminder that the Badgers are more responsible for holding back the Huskers than anyone else in the Big Ten Conference.

Wisconsin holds the distinction of being the only team to play — and beat — Nebraska in a Big Ten Championship Game. Before the divisions were realigned, the Badgers and Huskers played in the 2012 game. A Wisconsin blowout not only prevented Bo Pelini from giving Nebraska its first (only) conference championship of the 21st century; it humiliated Pelini and left a lasting mark which, in the course of time, helped usher him out of Lincoln.

Yes, Pelini’s lack of people skills — an abrasive manner which rubbed people the wrong way — led to his exit from Nebraska, but if he had been winning conference titles, Pelini’s lack of tact and decorum probably would have been tolerated to a much bigger degree. When Nebraska and Wisconsin moved into the same division, the Big Ten West, Wisconsin hounded Nebraska and remained the foremost obstacle for the Huskers on their path to Big Ten glory.

Nebraska has beaten Wisconsin only once since the Huskers joined the Big Ten at the start of this decade. Nebraska has never beaten the Badgers since the formation of the current Big Ten West. We can point out that if Nebraska ever does win the Big Ten West, Ohio State will probably be looming in the Big Ten Championship Game in Indianapolis. Yet, it seems rather silly to center Ohio State in this discussion when Wisconsin has been extremely effective in barring Nebraska from Indianapolis. The Badgers haven’t needed Ohio State’s help, thank you very much. UW has made sure that Nebraska has remained without a conference title this century.

If Scott Frost wants to improve his program, he has to beat the team which will stare down his Cornhuskers on Saturday. The latest Wisconsin-Nebraska game is a time to remind ourselves which school stands squarely in Nebraska’s path on the road to revival.