5 things we learned about OSU

On Nov 29, 2022

Michigan planted its flag, Baker Mayfield style, at midfield of Ohio Stadium after outplaying and outcoaching Ohio State.

C.J. Stroud, who has put up great numbers as a Buckeye, is 0-2 against the Wolverines and might have seen his Heisman hopes slip away again in a loss to his most hated rival.

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A lot went wrong for the Buckeyes as a season with great hopes came to what might be a crashing end.

While the lobbying for a College Football Playoff spot begins, here are five things we learned from Saturday’s game:

Ohio State can’t use injuries as an excuse

If standout Michigan running back Blake Corum had returned from last week’s injury and ripped through the Ohio State defense, then maybe Buckeye fans could use the, “Well, we didn’t have Jaxon Smith-Njigba or TreVeyon Henderson or Matt Jones or …” cry as an excuse.

But once Corum called it a day after a few plays, all was level, and that excuse went out the window. Corum is more important to Michigan’s attack than the missing Buckeyes are to theirs. He’s a Heisman candidate who is the epitome of Michigan toughness.

Henderson is electric but is a part-time player who misses a lot of time with injuries. Smith-Njigba is great but hasn’t played for almost the entire season. Jones was a staple on a line that has had its toughness questioned.

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Michigan found a way to respond, and Donovan Edwards rushed for 216 yards on Saturday. Ohio State gave most of its carries to a linebacker, Chip Trayanum, who gained 83 yards on 14 carries after having only one rush all season. The star of last week’s win at Maryland, freshman running back Dallan Hayden, was forgotten and had only two touches for 7 yards. Co-starter Miyan Williams, back from injury, looked healthy but had only eight carries for 34 yards.

Michigan won the defensive coordinator battle

Network TV types get advantages nobody else in the media does in that they get to talk to coaches of both teams with the understanding that what is said in that room stays in that room.

So when FOX’s Joel Klatt casually dropped before the game that Michigan’s defensive coordinator had a bunch of schemes planned that he had devised and saved to confuse Stroud, X’s and O’s geeks became quite interested.

Oddly, none of those schemes involved blitzing or harassing Stroud the way Michigan did last year. Instead, Stroud enjoyed a super-clean pocket but had great difficulty finding any of his five-star receivers open. It was a safe, keep-everything-in-front defense, and the result was confusion on the Ohio State side and maybe Stroud losing the Heisman.

On the other side, Ohio State’s Jim Knowles went with a high-risk scheme of playing forward and filling the gaps to stop the run. That left man-to-man coverage with no deep safety help. That’s great fun when it works, but when your coverage is the weak part of your defense, chaos can ensue. Granted, nobody expected Michigan quarterback J.J. McCarthy to actually throw accurately, but many of his big-play targets were wide open. In the end, big plays killed the Buckeyes.

A lot of eyes will be on Ryan Day

No, Ryan Day shouldn’t be fired, as the knee-jerks and drunks on High Street and Twitter were wishing late Saturday. But how the Ohio State coach handles a second straight loss to Michigan will be interesting.

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Day wears the stress of Michigan week for all to see. He knows the pressure, and he acknowledges it regularly. But he does so in a manner that doesn’t really make listeners feel that he enjoys it. It’s the way it is around here, he says, and he accepts it.

But does a man who can easily move to the NFL want to put up with the criticism that comes with losing one game a year? Does the unfairness of it cause him to look elsewhere?