Initially, it didn't look like either team wanted to change the zeroes on the Ohio Stadium scoreboard.
No. 3 Ohio State, knowing it must avoid a loss to remain in prime College Football Playoff position, shut down Minnesota and Mitch Leidner for three quarters Saturday night. The Golden Gophers had 110 total yards of offense in the first 45 minutes of a 28-14 loss to the Buckeyes, who forced Leidner to make more plays than he's used to because of a stout rush defense.
"We watched a lot of film this week so all the reads held true," said Tyquan Lewis, who finished with seven tackles, including four in Minnesota's first eight plays. "Everything they did, I already had a plan for like what was going to happen and just reacted to it.
It was the Ohio State defense that picked up the slack for their cohorts on the other side of the ball to open the scoring, when Vonn Bell intercepted Leidner and raced 16 yards to the pylon to give the Buckeyes a 7-0 with just under five minutes remaining before intermission.
"They ran that play earlier. They knew we were in man so they were going to try and pick me," Bell said. "Being that No. 1 is their guy, they wanted to get the ball to him. I took a picture in my head, I said they were going to run that play again, I jumped in front of him and made the play."
The play served as an early momentum shifter, as Ohio State's offense was stagnant with Cardale Jones at quarterback in place of a suspended J.T. Barrett. Linebacker Joshua Perry was whistled for targeting on his hit of Leidner as the quarterback released the ball into Bell's arms, a decision that would have erased the six points the safety just put on the scoreboard.
"It's in God's hands at this point. I was like, 'Let me stay out here, please,'" Perry said. "It is what it is."
The call was overturned, and Perry returned to finish tied with Bell for a team-high 10 tackles. There was plenty of defense in Ohio State's 29th straight Big Ten regular season victory, a game that saw more punts (five) than first downs (four) in the first quarter.
"I thought our defense, you know, we gave up some pass yards there. Certainly too many at the end," Urban Meyer said. "For the most part they just kept us — because offensively we're sloppy and not executing at a high level.
And then once we got going, we had some big plays and scored enough points to win the game."
Jones was serviceable, only turning the ball over once and icing the game with a 38-yard touchdown run on 3rd-and-9 with under two minutes to play.
"I was kind of waiting on someone to block that turf monster that was tripping me up," Jones said. "It was cool, because I knew that we were down in the coffin, our defense was playing lights out the whole night but they came up with a couple of big plays, missed assignments. But, it happens. I knew after that it was kind of over."
"They were well prepared, they came in with a good plan and they made it difficult to run the ball and it was a challenge," Ed Warinner said of Minnesota. "We had to work our butts off. Kids played hard, but it was a grinder. Not every win is always going to be as beautiful as you like, but wins are wins. And that's a good win against a well-coached football team."
Minnesota's offense caught life in the fourth quarter when Leidner hit KJ Maye for a score to cap a 10-play, 77-yard drive. Eight minutes later, Rashad Still snagged a score of his own to make it 21-14.
But Ohio State staved off the upset on a day where four unbeatens — LSU, TCU, Michigan State and Memphis — all went down.
"As long as we get that ‘W,’ that’s all that matters," Ezekiel Elliott said. "The guys we’ve got on this team are just so great, they all go hard and we’re going to do all we can to win on Saturdays."
Elliott finished with 114 yards and a touchdown on the ground, the 14th straight game he's eclipsed the century mark in the category. Ohio State's offense was up and down, doing nothing to slight the question about who starts at quarterback when the Buckeyes head west to Illinois next Saturday.
"I think they're are kind of, they're different players," Warinner said of Barrett and Jones. "You can't make them the same guy. You just have to figure out what the strengths are. It does make it a little bit more complicated when you have to shift back and forth. That makes it a little bit more complicated."
Meyer admitted witnessing a different feeling in recent weeks when either Barrett or Jones was commanding the offense, though he didn't coming out of fall camp. The unit appeared to be hitting its stride at Rutgers, but Barrett's citation for OVI and one-game suspension forced the defending national champions of college football to take a step back.
"I think the read game, you know, that's not a big part of Cardale's game, which is kind of one of the parts of the foundation of the offense," Meyer said.
"So you have to get those yards somewhere else, and it's got to be that. And looks pretty good when you're hitting that. Because they're really — you know, at times just putting a lot — this team, that's their base because they have two very good corners. Stop the run, stop the run, stop the run, and, boy, they were up in there. And we were trying to be as creative as we can to get some runs going. But then you've got to hit those passes."
Jones hit some passes down the field to Jalin Marshall and Braxton Miller, who left the game after enduring a vicious slam to the turf at the tail end of a 45-yard fourth quarter reception. Meyer said he expects him to be fine moving forward, but things could have gotten interesting if that had happened earlier in the game considering Miller was listed as backup quarterback.
"I mean the thing today was just what are you going to do if you run (Jones) a lot and he gets banged up and he comes out of the game," Warinner said. "That changes a lot of things. We had to be smart early with that and we took a couple opportunities to run him that got us a few first downs, so that was good. We tried to manage it the best we could and we came out with the win."
Miller did not attempt a pass Saturday despite taking a direct snap multiple times. He's said his twice surgically repaired shoulder is 100 percent, a sentiment echoed by Warinner and Meyer. Yet the jury is still out on whether or not he'll throw a pass this season — or ever again. Some believe Meyer could be saving such plays for bouts against Michigan State and Michigan to close the regular season, but it remains to be seen.
"There are a lot of theories out there," Warinner said with a smile.
On this night, though, Miller (56 total yards) helped Ohio State win a game that wasn't of the highest interest due to a lack of explosive plays. It was Meyer's 47th win in his now 50 games as the head coach in Columbus, the lone coach to achieve such a mark at the FBS level.
The Buckeyes sit alone atop the Big Ten East for the first time in 2015 and now have to prepare for Illinois while again ironing out a plan for quarterback following an underwhelming day offensively.
"Not what we would expect. We expect to play better," Meyer said. "I hate to say that because that sometimes sounds like we're taking away from our opponent, because they're a pretty rugged group. But just expect much more efficiency out of our offense."
"It had been, I think the last three games were pretty good. We had a lot of momentum in October playing," Warinner added. "Today they came out and did some things defensively and put some pressure on and made a challenge and we weren't consistent running the football. I think the heart and soul of our football team was we've been able to run consistently and we have to do a great job of figuring out how to get that done on a consistent basis."
