Ohio
Ohio State’s Ryan Day played The Game safe, while loose, aggressive Michigan won again: Nathan Baird’s observations
ANN ARBOR, Michigan — Three observations from Ohio State football’s 30-24 loss to Michigan in The Game on Saturday.
1. Ryan Day lived up to his promise to play loose and aggressive in last season’s Peach Bowl playoff semifinal against Georgia.
We haven’t seen that personality since. Any chance of it peeking through in The Game appeared to go out the window after about five game clock minutes.
On OSU’s second possession, Kyle McCord’s third-and-10 completion to Xavier Johnson achieved only 9 yards. Facing fourth-and-1 from his own 46, Day sent the punt team onto the field.
That’s the safe, predictable decision most coaches make. (Some analytics models say it’s also the wrong, short-sited, motivated by human psychology decision.) Regardless of the math, Day missed an opportunity to light a spark under an offense that spent most of the season flickering on and off in first halves.
He missed an opportunity to play like Michigan — to play assertively, confidently and decisively.
After the game, Day also repeatedly defended his decision to run the clock down and attempt a 52-yard field goal at the end of the first half. With a timeout to use and trailing 14-10, he deemed potentially coming up short on fourth down and giving Michigan the ball at its own 34 with upwards of 30 seconds remaining too risky of an outcome.
Well, which unit has been more trustworthy this season — the defense, or special teams? More to the point, it was another chance to put the game in the hands of the playmakers OSU celebrates the other six days of the week.
Summoning that “loose, aggressive” identity at the Peach Bowl involved no risk. Ohio State played with house money that day after backing into the playoff. The team, and Day, had less to lose. The opposite pressure existed Saturday, and the gravity of those consequences seemed to weigh on so many of his decisions.
Meanwhile, acting Michigan coach Sherrone Moore seemed eager to let his hair down.
When Michigan went up 14-3, it did so on a drive which converted fourth-down tries at the OSU 39 and 29. When the Wolverines extended to a 10-point lead early in the fourth quarter, a Donovan Edwards halfback pass to tight end Colston Loveland gained 34 yards and put them in the red zone.
For that matter, no two words better describe Michigan quarterback J.J. McCarthy’s playing style than “loose” and “aggressive.”
When Day made that declaration before the Peach Bowl, it felt like the announcement of a new doctrine applying to all big games moving forward. He should revisit that statement one year from now in The Game. At this point, what does he have to lose?
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2. In four games since returning from injury, TreVeyon Henderson had ripped off 13 runs of 10-plus yards, including six explosives ranging from 20 yards up to 75.
Michigan did not allow him a run longer than 8 yards. It put on a gap integrity clinic, with a deep defensive line swallowing double teams and allowing linebackers and safeties to fill downhill.
Of Henderson’s 19 run attempts, eight went for 2 or fewer yards. It more closely resembled some of the team’s stagnant early season rushing performances. Except instead of an offensive line still searching for cohesiveness, Saturday’s culprit — at least in real time — appeared to be a Michigan defense simply rising to the occasion.
Postgame, Day remembered “one drive in particular when we were really rocking off the ball.” He likely meant the 12-play, 75-yard, third-quarter touchdown drive that tied the game 17-17. Henderson and Chip Trayanum carried nine times for 49 yards on that drive, rushing on the final eight plays.
For the game, though, OSU barely cracked 100 yards and averaged 3.8 per carry. Michigan wasn’t much better — 156 yards and 4.0. By running on nine of 12 plays on its final scoring drive, it ate 8:05 of clock and tacked on a field goal that left OSU no option but a touchdown. Many small victories built into the large one.
“I feel like when you go into the game you have to win on rushing yards,” Day said. “I don’t know what the final numbers are, but they had more than we did, and that’s a big part of the game. Certainly has to do with the last couple of drives. And then turnover battle.
“I’d like to say it’s more than that, but I’m not sure that it is.”
3. There are loud mistakes, and there are quiet mistakes, and both can be critically costly. You don’t get much louder than Kyle McCord’s first-quarter interception, leading to Michigan’s first touchdown. Yet Emeka Egbuka’s drop of a sure third-down conversion on OSU’s first possession, resulting in a three-and-out, also reverberated four quarters later.
Ohio State converted 4 of 8 third downs the rest of the game. Who knows what they do with the rest of that opening drive if Ebuka holds on? Maybe it at least starts a field position exchange such that OSU is not backed up when McCord throws that interception.
Quiet and loud mistakes combined, the Buckeyes only made a few. I’m not sure Michigan made any. That’s a tough disparity to overcome on the road.
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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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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.
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“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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