On Tuesday’s Big Ten weekly coaches teleconference, Urban Meyer was asked which of his team’s nine units he felt had performed best through the first two months of the season. Without much hesitation, Ohio State’s head coach offered up his response.
“Probably the most consistent would be our tailback,” Meyer said. “For sure.”
Meyer, of course, was referring to the Buckeyes’ Heisman Trophy candidate at running back, Ezekiel Elliott, who has been Ohio State’s best player over the first two-thirds of the season.
Over the course of the first eight games, Elliott has already amassed the 1,000-yard barrier — for the second-straight season — with 1,130 yards rushing and 13 touchdowns. He’s run for over 100 yards in every game this year — and 13-straight games overall — and is currently third in FBS in rushing yards and fifth in rushing yards per game (141.3).
“From Game 1 to Game 8, [Elliott] has been really consistent with and without the ball,” Meyer said.
There were high expectations for Elliott this season after his 696-yard, eight-touchdown performance during Ohio State’s final three games of 2014; this type of performance is far from surprising.
While the Buckeyes’ offense, as a whole, struggled throughout the first month or so of this season, Elliott was the one constant. Things seem to be rolling a bit more now as Ohio State has rattled off back-to-back impressive performances.
“It’s definitely what we’ve been waiting for; Coach Meyer has been talking about cracking the rock,” Elliott said following the Buckeyes’ latest win, a 49-7 pasting of Rutgers. “Kind of just playing at the potential we should be playing at and I think we made a very big step to that.”
Elliott understands how things work; whenever he is asked about one of his big performances, he always credits his offensive line first. But even when Ohio State wasn’t playing particularly well up front at the beginning of the season, Elliott was still able to find success.
The 6-foot, 225-pound junior has been especially effective this fall in the second half as the Buckeyes’ powerful running game seems to wear teams down as the game goes on. Of Elliott’s 1,100-plus yards this year, 737 have come after halftime. His most memorable performance came in Ohio State’s 34-27 road win at Indiana where Elliott racked up 243 rushing yards in the second half and scored on touchdown runs of 55, 65 and 75 yards.
Much of the attention with Ohio State so far this season has been on the quarterback position and the seemingly never-ending competition between Cardale Jones and J.T. Barrett. It’s been Elliott, though, who has provided the Buckeyes with the much-needed stability on offense.
Couple that, with the improvement of the other offensive units, and it’s easy to see why Ohio State feels it is very close to becoming an elite team and one many people think can win the national championship. Again.
“I just think that every week we’ve just been getting better and better,” Elliott said. “I just think in the past couple games we’ve done a great job getting the ball to everyone, everyone is contributing, making the plays.”
