Except for its 35-0 first half against Western Michigan, Ohio State hasn’t looked great coming out of the gates this season. The Buckeyes only led by 14 points at halftime against Akron and Marshall and didn’t lead by more than 10 points until the final 29 seconds of the first half against Michigan State. In the fifth game of the season against Iowa on Saturday, Ohio State only took a 7-0 lead into the break.

In the third quarter of every game so far this season, however, the Buckeyes have done everything they’ve needed to do to seize firm control of the contest.

Ohio State outscored Akron 21-3 in the third quarter, then won the third frame 14-0 in each of its next three games against WMU, Marshall and Michigan State. Against Iowa, Ohio State had its most dominant third quarter yet, outsourcing the Hawkeyes 21-0 in the first 15 minutes of the second half. The Buckeyes scored on all three of their third-quarter possessions while their defense forced three straight turnovers – the third of which came on the first play of the fourth quarter – before scoring another touchdown just over four minutes into the fourth quarter to put the game away completely, taking a 35-0 lead in a game they’d ultimately win 35-7.

Altogether, the Buckeyes have now outscored their opponents 84-3 in the third quarter through five games.

Going into the fifth game of the season for both teams, Iowa had also been a third-quarter team in 2024, ranking third in the country with 12.25 third-quarter points per game this season. But Ohio State, who entered the week ranked second in the country with 15.75 third-quarter points per game and tied for fourth in the country with 0.75 third-quarter points allowed per game, continued to establish itself as the best third-quarter team in the country against the Hawkeyes.

While Ohio State certainly wanted to play better than it did in the first half, Ryan Day felt confident that his team would take care of business in the second half as long as it kept playing its game. After all, the Buckeyes had outgained Iowa with 199 yards to the Hawkeyes’ 90 – a pair of turnovers by Ohio State in the second quarter was the biggest reason why the game was as tight as it was.

“On defense, there was energy, but also even on offense, it’s like if we just take care of the football, we can turn this thing and get going because the score was probably a little bit different if we take care of the ball,” Day said. “We really wanted to come out and have a great drive to start the third quarter, and then we started getting the short fields and the turnovers, and the game just flipped there.”

Ohio State left guard Donovan Jackson believes one factor in the Buckeyes’ repeated dominance in the third quarter is how they’ve utilized the iPads they’re now allowed to use during games this season to make halftime adjustments in the locker room.

“The rule change with the iPads, I think that certainly helps because you can actually see what you did wrong. You can see what you can correct,” Jackson said. “Before it was like, ‘Hey, I think we did this. Let’s try to do this.’ Now we can actually see, like, ‘Okay, this is what happened. Let’s try to fix this.’ So I feel like that’s a huge help.

“But also just having confidence in us as a team. We know that we have a fantastic defense to help us in the back end, and we know that if we just keep pounding the rock that eventually TreVeyon, Quinshon or any one of our backs are going to make it work. And then we just got to stay on our blocks, make sure we’re ID’d and fitted to the right people, and just execute the plays that are called.”

Another factor is simply that it’s been a big point of emphasis for the Buckeyes to start the second half strong. Day has spoken to his players repeatedly this year about the importance of winning the “middle eight” – that being the final four minutes of the first half and the first four minutes of the second half. While the Buckeyes squandered their opportunity to score late in the second quarter when Will Howard threw his only interception of the game, they made up for it by scoring 14 points in the first six minutes and one second of the third quarter.

“We just came out and we said, ‘It’s a new half,’” Howard said of the Buckeyes’ strong start in the third quarter. “We always put the emphasis on that middle eight and ending the first half the right way and starting the second half the right way. We did not execute the middle half in the first half, but coming out of the halftime, going down and getting a score, getting a couple turnovers, that was huge. That was our emphasis was like, ‘We have to come out and start fast. We’ve got to go down and get a score … and then we’ve got to come out and get some stops.’”

Ohio State’s seven-point first half gives the Buckeyes plenty to work on as they prepare for their first marquee game of the season against Oregon next week. While they were able to get away with a slow start offensively against Iowa, they might not be able to do so against the Ducks, easily the best offensive team Ohio State will face in the first half of the season – though Oregon has had some slow starts against lesser opponents, too, only winning the first half by an average of 11 points in its five wins so far this year.

But while the Buckeyes haven’t played as well as they would have liked in most of their first halves this season, they’ve never allowed that to rattle them for the second half. Saturday’s second-half response against the best team Ohio State had played so far this season was the most impressive yet, giving Day reason to feel good about his team’s ability to respond to adversity.

“That was good to see,” Day said of Ohio State’s second-half response. “You know, not that you’d like to see those kind of things (the mistakes in the first half), but it is good to face a little bit of adversity and see how our team responds, and so all things we can learn from.”