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.”

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.”

Two people are dead after a house fire in northern Ohio on Saturday morning.

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The fire was reported in Wakeman, which is in Huron County, around 8:15 a.m.

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Wakeman Assistant Fire Chief Eschen confirmed to WOIO in Cleveland that a mother and daughter were killed in the fire.

No other injuries were reported.

The Wakeman Fire District took to social media to thank the other fire departments who helped put the fire out.

The fire remains under investigation.

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