Ohio
How Ohio State’s defense made Iowa’s offense one-dimensional to force second half turnover spree
COLUMBUS, Ohio — Ohio State football knew what Iowa wanted to do on Saturday.
The Hawkeyes were 10th in the country in rushing yards coming into Saturday’s matchup, led by the second-best runner in the nation in Kaleb Johnson.
Ohio State’s first half issues on offense allowed Iowa to run its offense off the ground game, even though it wasn’t nearly as successful as it had been throughout the season.
But after Ohio State took a 14-0 lead on its way to a 35-7 blowout victory, Iowa couldn’t just run the football anymore. Iowa needed to lean more on the pass despite ranking 125th of 134 FBS teams in passing yards per game (147.5).
When the Hawkeyes had to throw, that’s when the Buckeyes broke things open.
Ohio State forced turnovers on three consecutive possessions, picking off quarterback Cade McNamara once and making him fumble twice.
“We knew they were going to be a good team coming in here,” Ohio State defensive end Jack Sawyer said. “They’re going to run their stuff and they’re a veteran, older group of guys. We love going against teams like that that want to run the ball and challenge our manhood. So we were ready and I thought we did a great job.”
Johnson entered the game ranked second only to Boise State’s Ashton Jeanty in rushing yards (685) and tied for third in rushing touchdowns (nine). He came off a 206-yard performance in Iowa’s previous game, a 31-14 win at Minnesota on Sept. 21.
The Buckeyes, who were third in rushing defense (61.8 yards per game), kept Johnson to 86 yards on 15 carries. 28 of those yards came on a fourth-quarter touchdown when the outcome was decided.
“It was a big challenge to our entire team about physicality and toughness. I thought we answered that,” Ohio State coach Ryan Day said.
The Buckeyes had already quieted Johnson in the first half, limiting him to 19 yards on eight carries.
Before he had his ninth carry, Ohio State had a 21-0 lead.
That’s because the Buckeyes scored on the opening drive of the second half when Jeremiah Smith made another one-handed touchdown catch to give his team a 14-0 lead. On the very next play from scrimmage, Sawyer strip-sacked McNamara as he tried to scramble up the field. Cody Simon recovered the fumble, and the Buckeyes scored three plays later on a four-yard TD run by Howard.
“I think that a big thing this offseason is disrupting the football,” Sawyer said. “If you’re the first one to the ball, try to get a punch. Lathan (Ransom is) the master at it. You see him do it almost every game it seems like. So it’s definitely a point of emphasis for us.”
During the following drive, Johnson broke loose for the first time in the game with a 28-yard run to get into Ohio State territory. But three plays later, Simon tipped a McNamara pass and Davison Igbinosun picked it off, returning the ball to the Iowa 40-yard line and setting up another OSU touchdown, which was a 15-yard pass from Howard to Emeka Egbuka.
Defensive tackle Ty Hamilton forced another McNamara fumble on the first play of the fourth quarter. Kenyatta Jackson Jr. recovered it, and Howard and Egbuka connected for a third touchdown, this time from three yards out, seven plays later to make it 35-0. That ended a sequence of three consecutive touchdowns off Iowa turnovers to blow the game open.
“Those were all really big plays in the game. So any time we can do that, it’s a game changer,” Day said. “When you come into games, I think especially for guys like Jack and JT (Tuimoloau), there’s this,’ Well, how many sacks are you gonna get?’ Well, if they’re running the ball every play, it’s hard to get sacks. So what do you do? You stop the run.
“We wish we had done that a little bit sooner, forced them to throw the ball, and then here come the sacks because now there’s opportunity. I think they did that and saw some big plays happen.”
In addition to getting four sacks, Ohio State finished with nine tackles for loss. Two of those were against Johnson, both in the third quarter.
“I think we showed some toughness today. I think guys are physical up front, on both sides of the ball, and obviously their offense had like 200 and some rushing yards,” said Ohio State linebacker Sonny Styles, who led the team in tackles with seven, two of which were for loss. “Like I said, you got to keep getting better every week.”
Iowa finished the game with 116 yards rushing as a team on 27 carries. By comparison, Johnson’s quietest game of the young season coming in was in Iowa’s opener vs. Illinois State when he ran just 11 times for 119 yards and two TDs.
68 of the 116 yards rushing for Iowa came on its only touchdown drive, which was in the fourth quarter facing a 35-0 deficit. Backup quarterback Brendan Sullivan had a 30-yard run, and Johnson ended the drive with a 28-yard TD run.
The Buckeyes had several backups in the game at that point, and it was the only blemish on an otherwise strong afternoon. But as Styles discussed after the game, the Buckeyes defense wanted more.
“I think for the defense, our mindset, we wanted to shut them out,” he said. “We feel like we’re fully capable of doing that, and I think we gave up a cheap one late. So we’re a little frustrated about that. A few big plays that we kind of allowed, things like that, like I said. So there’s always things to correct.”
Ohio
Ohio Lottery Pick 3 Midday, Pick 3 Evening winning numbers for Dec. 22, 2024
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Drawings are held daily, seven days a week, at 12:29 p.m. and 7:29 p.m., except Saturday evening.
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Drawings are held daily, seven days a week, at approximately 10:35 p.m.
04-07-37-43-47, Lucky Ball: 08
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Ohio
After beating Tennessee, Ohio State will finally get its rematch with Oregon
COLUMBUS, Ohio — Ohio State players had been thinking about a rematch with Oregon long before the Buckeyes crushed Tennessee in a first-round playoff game.
Their first chance to avenge the Oct. 12 loss to the Ducks looked to be the Big Ten championship game, but that slipped away when the Buckeyes lost to Michigan and gave up their spot in the title game.
Now, by virtue of Saturday night’s 42-17 win over Tennessee, the Buckeyes will see the Ducks again in a quarterfinal game on a grand stage — the Rose Bowl on New Year’s Day.
“It’s going to be a heck of an opportunity for all of us,” Ohio State quarterback Will Howard said. “I think we’ve all been looking forward to this one, another crack at these guys. The way the last one ended didn’t sit right with me.”
In the first game, the Buckeyes led twice in the second half but couldn’t hold it. They were driving in the final minute. After a questionable interference penalty on freshman receiver Jeremiah Smith, Howard scrambled out of the pocket to extend a play and slid as time ran out, ending the 32-31 shootout on a mental error.
It would be the closest game of the season for top-seeded Oregon (13-0).
“We’re looking forward to the opportunity because it was not a great game for us,” Ohio State defensive coordinator Jim Knowles said. “And I know, quite frankly, the guys got a little pissed off. They used that game as motivation. So, I’m sure they’re looking forward to another opportunity.”
The Ohio State defense — now statistically the best in the nation — allowed Heisman Trophy finalist Dillon Gabriel and the Ducks to pile up 496 yards.
“You get to watch yourself play, and watch the mistakes that you’ve made, and you see how they attack you,” Ohio State linebacker Cody Simon said. “But also, there’s a lot of football played in between that. They’ve changed. We’ve changed, and we’re just, we’re going to look at what we need to do, and trust the game plan the coaches have, and we’ll go and tackle them.”
Nearly everything was working right inside the frigid Horseshow on Saturday night, the first December college football game in the history of the 102-year-old stadium.
Howard threw two touchdown passes to Smith and compiled 311 passing yards — his highest total since the Oregon game. TreVeyon Henderson and Quinshon Judkins rushed for two touchdowns apiece. The defense sacked Tennessee quarterback Nico Iamaleava four times and limited him to 104 passing yards, his lowest total of the season.
Oregon coach Dan Lanning recognized the Buckeyes’ ability to be explosive.
“That’s an elite football that we just played,” Lanning said after the October game. “They’re really, really talented. They don’t have weaknesses.”
Other quarterfinal games include No. 6 seed Penn State against third-seeded Boise State on Dec. 31, and on Jan. 1 it will be No. 5 Texas against No. 4 Arizona State, and No. 7 Notre Dame versus No. 2 Georgia.
___
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Ohio
Tennessee overwhelmed in humbling Playoff loss at Ohio State: ‘It stings’
COLUMBUS, Ohio — By the time the beating was finished, most of the thousands of Tennessee fans who flooded into Ohio Stadium were gone.
At least two remained — one in a Peyton Manning jersey and another in a coonskin cap — and hovered over the tunnel as the stone-faced Vols walked into the beginning of the end of their season.
They offered encouragement and some high fives in contrast to the derisive “S-E-C” chant coming from the Ohio State student section as the Buckeyes celebrated a cherished Rose Bowl berth that eluded Tennessee.
Ohio State 42, Tennessee 17.
The Vols’ 21-0 hole after the game’s first 12 minutes was too deep to escape. Ohio State’s talent at edge rusher and receiver overwhelmed Tennessee.
Cutting the lead to 11 at halftime offered a brief glimmer of hope until Ohio State forced a punt on the second half’s first possession and followed up with a 65-yard touchdown drive to slam the door for good.
GO DEEPER
Tennessee fans’ orange invasion of Ohio Stadium: ‘Don’t tell us we can’t do that’
“Everybody was just disappointed,” Tennessee coach Josh Heupel said.
The offensive line struggled to provide quarterback Nico Iamaleava with clean pockets. Tennessee’s receivers couldn’t find space in the secondary, forcing Iamaleava to hold onto the ball and try to create an offense built from scraps of quarterback scrambles.
The secondary struggled to cover Ohio State’s stellar receivers and even when they did, freshman phenom Jeremiah Smith and NFL-bound senior Emeka Egbuka hauled in contested catches anyway.
“They made some plays. That’s gonna happen against a good team,” Heupel said. “What we didn’t do is come back and find a way to get on the right side of it. That’s defensively, offensively, it’s everybody.”
Nico Iamaleava on his 20 carries: “I didn’t expect to run that many times.”
Josh Heupel said some of those were him scrambling.
— David Ubben (@davidubben) December 22, 2024
Injuries, Ohio State’s defense and the early struggles forced Tennessee to try to morph on the fly into a team it isn’t.
Dylan Sampson, the SEC’s Offensive Player of the Year, suffered a hamstring injury late in the regular-season finale against Vanderbilt and aggravated the injury early on Saturday. Tennessee knew entering the game Sampson would be limited, but he was barely available and couldn’t continue after briefly returning in the second half.
He carried the ball at least 19 times in every SEC game this season. He carried the ball twice on Saturday.
Iamaleava hadn’t run the ball more than a dozen times all season. Between called runs and scrambles, he had to carry the ball 20 times. The Vols’ longest passing play of the day was just 21 yards. Iamaleava finished with a season-low 104 passing yards despite throwing the ball 31 times, just the third time this season he’s topped 30 attempts in a game.
“It sucks to go out that way,” Iamaleava said. “That’s not who we are, man.”
He averaged 8.3 yards per attempt during the regular season, good for 21st nationally. He averaged 3.3 yards per attempt on Saturday.
“When we’re not creating explosives, whether it’s poor calls or execution, it puts you in a phone booth,” offensive coordinator Joey Halzle said. “We didn’t stretch them enough. We didn’t force them to respect us going by them enough to make them change up what they were doing. When you let them play comfortable and play in their game plan and don’t make them change, it creates long nights like what happened tonight.”
The defense gave up 311 yards through the air to Will Howard, a quarterback who had just one 300-yard game this season. Tennessee had surrendered 300 passing yards in just one other game this year, to Carson Beck and Georgia.
The Vols lost by 25 in a game in which they won the turnover battle, 1-0.
“Their skill on both sides of the ball was as good as you’ll see,” Heupel said.
Defensive coordinator Tim Banks said the Buckeyes offense didn’t do much the Vols hadn’t prepared for on film. They just did it well and consistently won 1-on-1 matchups.
A breakthrough season crescendoed to the program’s first College Football Playoff bid and arguably the biggest game for the program in at least two decades.
Tennessee fans flooded into Ohio Stadium by the thousands. Instead of witnessing another breakthrough, they were forced to shiver through a breakdown on the sport’s biggest stage and a game that was barely competitive, just like the three first-round games that preceded it.
The only matchup of Big Ten and SEC teams in Round 1 produced the most lopsided result of the opening weekend of the expanded Playoff, with the Big Ten team’s players parading around their home field with roses between their teeth.
Tennessee has looked the part of a good team all season, but losses to Georgia and Ohio State laid bare the reality that the Vols have yet to ascend into the sport’s upper crust and aren’t ready to chase the kinds of titles that have eluded the program since 1998.
Ohio State’s offensive game plan showed aggression and a desire to stretch the field early, making it clear that Tennessee would not be facing the same Buckeyes team that lost a brawl at the line of scrimmage against Michigan three weeks ago.
The Vols came up against one of the nation’s most talented teams. For 60 minutes, the Buckeyes looked the part, flexing at Tennessee’s expense.
“It stings losing like that,” linebacker Will Brooks said.
It was tough to swallow for Heupel, who used the word “disappointed” 10 times in his 14 minutes with reporters after the loss. Multiple times, he was left shaking his head.
He saw the same thing that the thousands of fans in orange witnessed, too.
“Disappointed in our performance for our fans,” Heupel said. “People that have watched us, it wasn’t our best football tonight.”
But it’s the football Tennessee will be left to ponder as it enters an offseason that started earlier than anyone in orange hoped. As Heupel addressed his team, he began by using that word, acknowledging the disappointment of Tennessee’s first trip to the Playoff before pointing to the future after closing a stretch of 30 wins in three seasons.
“Everybody better let that soak in,” Heupel said, “and it’s gotta propel you to whatever’s next.”
(Photo of Nico Iamaleava: Saul Young / USA Today Network via Imagn Images)
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