STATE COLLEGE, Pa. — The morning began at 4 a.m. with an unexpected wake-up call from a band of rogue Penn State fans supposedly armed with air horns outside of Ohio State’s team hotel. The lone place of asylum for the trekking Buckeyes in a house of horrors known as Happy Valley was no longer safe.
Yet during pre-game warmups at Beaver Stadium — a legendary place that swells to almost three times the population of State College every fall weekend — they radiated with a certain strut.
The rapper Drake’s 0 to 100 blared from Ohio State’s locker room. Sophomore running back Ezekiel Elliott danced while stretching. The Buckeyes, unexpectedly, unveiled they were wearing alternative all-white uniforms as if to take a jab at the school's infamous White Out — a display reserved for only for Penn State’s biggest games against its biggest opponents.
And in this place, there is no greater of an opponent than Ohio State — the Nittany Lions played as such.
For a team struggling to stay above water as the effects of NCAA sanctions start to slowly pull it beneath the surface this season, this was a chance to earn a statement win. On Saturday night, they came so close to coming up for a massive gulp of air.
Instead Ohio State — behind a stingy, suffocating and relentless defense — survived Penn State and a nearly disastrous second half to win in double overtime, 31-24.
After being held scoreless in the final two quarters, redshirt freshman quarterback J.T. Barrett engineered two gutsy drives to keep an outside shot of making the first-ever college football playoff alive — though, in all honesty, struggling to finish off the hobbled Nittany Lions and their decimated roster won't do much to clarify where Ohio State fits on an ever-changing national stage. The Buckeyes had little time to think about it, anyway.
“I just found a way," Barrett said. "Anything you’ve gotta do to win the game."
Because the big picture became an afterthought in a game that was never supposed to be this close.
By the time the late October sky turned to night and the winds swirling through the Pennsylvania countryside started to howl, the din of one of the sport’s grandest spectacles hushed to whispers in the first half. Penn State was a 14-point underdog at home, after all; this was supposed to happen.
On offense, Ohio State gut-punched the Nittany Lions with Elliott and Barrett, who combined for 184 yards on 46 carries. The defense abused sophomore quarterback Christian Hackenberg and battered through a porous offensive line that has one scholarship tackle between its senior, junior and sophomore classes. Because of this, Penn State couldn't run the ball. It couldn't pass it. It couldn't do anything. Blood was in the water, and the Buckeyes were sharks.
“We played aggressive tonight, I know they couldn’t stop us,” sophomore safety Vonn Bell said. “We were gonna make them play the short game and we were gonna come up and tackle.”
Left, right, up, down, Ohio State's defense — whether it was Bell, Joey Bosa, Joshua Perry, Tyvis Powell or Darron Lee — was not only there to stop Penn State; they were there to demoralize it with bone-crunching hits and flank it from escaping to open space.
Even without the absurd offensive totals that have become norms of late, Ohio State looked like the team that pillaged through its last four opponents since a stunning loss to Virginia Tech. And after smashing Rutgers last weekend, they talked of being "never satisfied" and repulsed by complacency. They dripped with confidence and vowed to temper it from mutating into something dangerous.
But the Buckeyes — who were so in control and in command of their overmatched adversary — fell asleep at the wheel and nearly rolled off the road because of it.
Despite what was perhaps one of the most futile offensive displays of any team this season, Penn State — thanks to a defense that held Ohio State's surging offense to a season-low output of 293 total yards — came to life and so did seemingly all of Happy Valley.
The sea of white — the way it once bobbed and rolled like the chop of stormy water — moved again. While the Buckeyes inexplicably imploded offensively, the Nittany Lions found their legs offense and bloated with confidence on defense.
“They played their tails off,” head coach Urban Meyer said.
Here is where the unraveling began.
Barrett — who suffered a sprained knee in the second quarter — threw two interceptions in the second half that reversed the tide of a game teetering on becoming a blowout.
The first, which defensive tackle Anthony Zettel plucked in front of Ohio State's sideline, was taken back to the end zone for Penn State’s first score of the night early in the third quarter. It set off a tsunami of momentum intended to swallow the Buckeyes whole. After Barrett's second interception, it appeared that it might.
On an eight-play drive aided by missed tackles and critical penalties early in the fourth quarter, Hackenberg heaved a 24-yard pass that arced in the air before wide receiver Saeed Blacknall ripped it from the sky and fell into the back corner of the end zone. 17-14. The comeback, officially, was on.
Meanwhile, Ohio State's offensive line — which was supposed to be drastically improved from the one that gave up seven sacks to the Hokies — offered Barrett little to time to digest a steady barrage of blitzing defenders. The all-grown-up cache of skill players like wide receiver Michael Thomas and H-back Dontre Wilson on the outside were largely non-factors. A missed field goal didn't help either.
With a chance to put the Nittany Lions away late in the game, a six-play drive that mustered only 27 yards stalled.
As the clock ticked-and-tocked late in the period, Penn State marched 19 plays down the field before senior kicker Sam Ficken drilled a 31-yard field goal to send the once-lopsided contest into an improbable overtime.
The stands echoed with “WE ARE...PENN STATE” and pulsed with the hope of salvaging a season at a juncture. Bon Jovi's "Livin' On a Prayer" rang out from the loudspeakers, and the student section roared along. It was an anthem. Then they bounced and shrieked the "I Believe That We Will Win" chant made famous by the American soccer team. Their white pom-poms punched in unison with every word. It was a profession.
When Penn State scored fast in the first overtime and take its first lead of the game, 24-17, the cheers got even louder. Security lined the walls and rails of Beaver Stadium as if to ward off the crowd's growing velocity from pouring onto the field.
Here they were on the cusp of the biggest triumph of the post-Joe Paterno era in a game that looked, at first, unconquerable. Here was the White Out; the mighty Buckeyes were about to disappear into it.
And all of the sudden, just like it started, the storm dissipated in dizzying fashion.
Amid the chaos, the lights and the crashing waves of fans clad in white brimming around the field at Beaver Stadium, a young Ohio State team said it found something to cling onto.
"It’s a real brotherhood. We gotta do for the guy next to him, it just shows how tight this team is on offense and defense as a whole," Lee said. "We knew we had to come out and make some plays, we knew we had to buckle down and finish the game."
In two short drives and on six plays — most of which featured the injured Barrett rolling and cutting through Penn State's exhausted defense — a climatic upset bid that reached a crescendo minutes before had the life sucked away from it. Jubilation turned to devastation. Ohio State's sideline, which had fallen under a spell of disbelief, bounced like it did during pre-game.
And while Saturday was very much a reality check for the Buckeyes with a bout with Michigan State looming in two weeks, they did what good teams do to bad teams. They won.
"We were all looking at each other like, ‘Hey, this is it. Let’s buckle down and go win this game and just finish,'" Lee said.
"We have four downs and let’s stop them. That’s all we said … keep on grinding it out, we’re gonna win this together," Bell said.
“There’s nothing else to do," Barrett said. "Whatever it takes, we’ve gotta do it.”
There would be no celebration in State College.
