This is a play-by-play analysis of the Ohio State defense vs. Indiana. This series has been adapted from the Upon Further Review series over at MGoBlog, which itself uses a rating system somewhat similar to PFF.

If you are curious to reading any of the other previous entries, including the mid-year review that was done last week, you can see the archive here:

Offense vs. Oregon / Defense vs. Oregon

Offense vs. Tulsa / Defense vs. Tulsa

Offense vs. Akron / Defense vs. Akron

Offense vs. Rutgers / Defense vs. Rutgers

Offense vs. Maryland / Defense vs. Maryland

Mid-Season Review

Offense vs. Indiana

The defense got another game to improve before the meat of the schedule. The defense has played well the last few weeks, but it’s tough to see if the improvement is sustainable, or if it is merely fool’s gold. The biggest question marks on the defense have been the linebackers besides Steele Chambers, and the production of the defensive ends with rushing the quarterback.

The Buckeyes seemed to take another step in the right direction against Indiana. Here is the play-by-play:

I started watching this game, expecting that there was nothing that I could learn about the defense against an anemic offense with a backup quarterback. It turns out that I was wrong. The first half was a treasure trove of useful signals, small as they were.

The first drive saw Indiana march down the field and punch in a touchdown on a 15-play, 75-yard drive. This drive looked really ugly at first glance, but after watching it again, it was obvious that what Indiana was doing wasn’t sustainable. Their success rate was low that entire first drive. For those of you who don’t know, success rate is a metric that is featured prominently in Bill Connelly’s SP+ ranking. It just defines a successful play as the following: gaining 50% of the yards to gain on first down, gaining 70% of the yards to gain on second down, and gaining 100% of the yards to gain on third down. So, for Indiana’s first drive, they lost 2 yards on 1st and 10 (failure), then they gained 5 yards on 2nd and 12 (failure) before getting 7 yards on 3rd and 7 (success). That would be a 33% success rate. For the first drive, their success rate was 7/15, or 46.7%. That’s not horrible, but that’s certainly not typical for a touchdown drives. For comparison, Ohio State’s offense had a success rate of 9/12, or 75% for its first, long touchdown drive.

On Indiana’s third downs, they seemingly guessed what Ohio State was going to do on defense every time. Being able to predict exactly what the defense is going to do isn’t impossible; Oregon certainly did it to Ohio State. The difference is the diversity of the defensive scheme since then.  Against Oregon, Ohio State would run either Cover-1, or Cover-3, electing not to disguise which one they were going to do before the snap, and usually running the same one for an entire drive. If the corners looked like they were bailing, they were running Cover-3. If they were pressing, it was Cover-1. Against Indiana, this was not the case. For the first three plays, Ohio State looked to run Cover-6, Cover-2, then Cover-1. It looked like they ran three different coverages on three different plays. Yet Indiana called a man beater (Quick Slants with a rub route) despite Ohio State opening the game running zone two plays in a row. Hickman nearly broke the pass up, but it was a perfect play call. The very next play, after Ohio State had just run Cover-1, which is normally a good defense to use against RPO’s, Indiana runs an RPO. Ohio State, however, had switched coverages again to Cover-3. The whole drive was like this. Indiana was relying on guessing the correct scheme that Ohio State was going to run. When their luck ran out, so too did their offense.

That isn’t to say that it was all play-calling; Tyleik Williams and Jerron Cage got bullied up front a couple of times on the drive. On the last throw for a touchdown, Cody Simon didn’t stay with the tight end while he looks to have the deep zone on this play. That last play was especially frustrating, as the pressure hit Tuttle right after. If Simon had stayed on the tight end, this is incomplete or a sack.

The rest of the half was a completely different story. Here is the first drive compared with the rest of the drive, just to highlight the absurdity.

• First Drive: 15 Plays, 75 Yards, 5.0 YPP
• Rest of Half: 15 Plays, -35 Yards, -2.3 YPP

That’s a bloodbath. Indiana couldn’t do anything afterwards, as the defensive line ate Indiana alive.

Here is the defensive chart:

After seeing the absurd season long defensive line grades, I vowed to grade them more harshly in the future. This game didn’t give me a chance. As I said earlier, Cage had some issues in his first start, but he settled down and was excellent afterward. The first two plays, he was held up by a single blocker, then got knocked down on a pass rush, which prevented a likely sack. He did make some nice plays though, like when he jumped the snap at 5:40 and was immediately in the backfield on an arc read to blow up the play. His quickness and anticipation gave me some flashbacks to Robert Landers.

Tyleik Williams also had some issues in his first extended action at 1-technique. He got pancaked on the first drive, and had a problem getting off blocks. I like the move to 1-tech, as he has the body for it, and if he plays as well as he has at 3-tech, he would be able to start at 1-tech alongside Haskell Garrett instead of having to start over Garrett. However, he was just okay against Indiana.

Smith came off the bench after Jean-Baptiste, which I disagree with. I don’t think Jean-Baptiste is bad, but Tyreke Smith explodes off the line against the pass. Seeing him get a sack was good, even though I thought his play was a step down from how it had been before the injury. Smith and Harrison are the only two starting quality linemen who can get consistent pass rush.

Harrison had a couple of nice plays in this game. His first sack with 7:07 left in the first quarter showed his speed, where the quarterback didn’t think there was any chance that Harrison could catch him. With 13:43 in the third quarter, he sacks the quarterback, but the sack is taken off of the board due to a questionable defensive holding. He has had three sacks taken off the board this year due to penalties, which is one more sack than he has had the whole season. If Harrison had 5 sacks instead of 2, the public perception of his season is radically different.

I feel pretty confident in the defensive line as being a very good unit. There aren’t any stars, but they seem really dependable. They remind me of 2017 a little bit, with Tyquan Lewis, Sam Hubbard, a young Nick Bosa, and Jalyn Holmes, as well as Dre-Mont Jones on the interior. Jack Sawyer as a freshman isn’t Nick Bosa as a sophomore, but he looks like he is on that track. Lewis, Hubbard, and Holmes were not double-digit sack guys, but they were consistently good football players that could stop the run and have a few pressures each game. I don’t have many questions about this group moving forward, with the possible exception of the 1-tech position. I have absolutely no idea why they shuffled that around this week, unless it was exclusively to get Tyleik Williams on the field more in competitive situations. If that’s the case, it is a worthy experiment. If not, I don’t see why this is happening this late in the season.

This game also helped clear up the pecking order of the linebackers. Steele Chambers is clearly the best in the room right now, but I think Eichenberg is starting to assert himself as the other guy when the game is on the line. He has improved every week since Oregon with his best game against Maryland. His hit on the last play of the third quarter was delightful.

Some of Eichenberg’s greater importance in the defense is the lack of improvement from Mitchell and Simon. I don’t think either of them are bad, but they have been playing roughly at the same level since the Oregon game, which is average linebacker play. For backups, that’s awesome to have. It means that they won’t lose you the game if one of your starters can’t play. For starters on a team that has aspirations of a national championship, they have a lot of work to do, though there is still time. Simon probably had his worst game this year. Outside of the busted coverage on the first drive of the game, he also gave up a chunk with 8:56 in the third quarter immediately following a sack. I want to reiterate that Mitchell and Simon are fine. They are solid players. They are not as good as Eichenberg, who himself is still a significant step down from Steele Chambers. At this point, the only reason to take Chambers off the field is to give him rest or prevent injury, which are two valid reasons. Against an actual threat, he should always be out there. If Eichenberg and Chambers can stay healthy, I think this defense can continue to improve and play at a high level.

The secondary didn’t get tested much at all, but there are some interesting things to take from this game. Williamson is now the cover safety starter, but he might platoon with Ransom when they need that position to fill runs. I get that Williamson is smaller, but he tackles better than Ransom. Craig Young would be a better fit if you ask me. Either way, they are trying to figure out how to get better matchups for that position, but Williamson is the starter.

Williamson has also been pretty great so far. I can’t believe how much better he is playing than last year. He’s probably a future NFL player at this point, which is not something that I would have considered two months ago. His play with 12:47 in the third quarter, where he upends the quarterback after Eichenberg takes the wrong gap was incredible. Williamson prevented a fifteen yard play and delivered a big hit at the same time.

Lathan Ransom moved back to his original position at cover safety. I don’t know what this means. Bryson Shaw has been playing fine, maybe even well. Has he locked up that spot? Or is Ransom a swing positional guy now who plays the cover safety/deep safety at different times? I have absolutely no idea. The change back surprised me. If he is a guy who is moving back to be the better tackler at cover safety, I don’t think that is the right move. Craig Young can play that even better. Maybe his play at deep safety wasn’t exactly what they were looking for. I don’t know, and I don’t understand it. The coaching staff has been pretty good though over the last month, so I don’t have a huge reason to doubt what they are seeing in practice.

Kourt Williams got time with the starting group in the second half. This is exciting for a player that the coaches rave about, and a guy who has shown a lot of impressive flashes so far. He did have the biggest bust in the game on the second play of the third quarter. Shaw is trying to get Kourt Williams to line up deep on the other side, but Williams seems confused. Then, when the QB drops back to pass, Williams occupies a shallow zone and starts to pursue the QB when he started to scramble. Cam Brown was trying to do his job, but he couldn’t guard two people at once, leading to a big completion. This was a wake-up call for Williams, but he played well after that. His tackle for a loss with 11:59 in the same quarter looked to have come from an instruction manual.

The corners had few graded plays because there weren’t a ton of things thrown their way. I don’t have much insight on their play, to be honest. Brown and Banks got more playing time, and they did pretty well.

Honestly though, I don’t know who else in the Big Ten can challenge this group. Michigan State has two explosive receivers and a solid quarterback, but they’ve kind of disappeared against Big Ten competition, including the Indiana team that Ohio State just demolished. Nebraska is probably the next best passing attack, though Cade McNamara from Michigan hit some deep shots early in the year. Now that I list those “threats,” it feels like we won’t know much about this group until the playoff (if they make it), which is unsettling. They’ve performed adequately so far, as much as it is worth.

Overall, this defense has been at least as good against the run as last year, but their pass defense looks to have significantly improved, even with all of the youth. The backup freshmen and sophomores are now the only ones having occasional big mistakes, which is good to see. I mean, mistakes are never fun, but if the starters aren’t making them, it doesn’t matter much. This defense may not be top-five like they were in 2019. They are solid, and they won’t give up huge games to average or bad offenses. Michigan is probably the best offense that Ohio State will face for a while, and even they are one-dimensional and don’t match up great with Ohio State, though good linebacker play will be crucial in that game.

If the offense and defense keep playing like they have been, this team is not going to lose until the playoffs. Even then, it will likely take an Alabama to exploit them. The biggest concern is what will happen when the offense has an off-day. If it happens later this year, will the defense be able to hold up? I don’t think we will know until it happens.