It seems that every season Ohio State plays a game that is much closer than it seems it should be. This happens to most teams, of course (witness Alabama’s one-point squeaker over Arkansas earlier this season, with only a missed PAT standing between Bert Bielema and a potential upset for the ages), but with the Buckeyes it’s an annual tradition.
As the trip to Happy Valley almost did on Saturday, those “downer” games can sometimes result in the unthinkable, such as the “Purdue Harbor” game of 2009. A team that had only a narrow loss to USC on its record all season long—a year capped by a win over Oregon in the Rose Bowl—inexplicably fell 26-18 to the eventual 5-7 (4-4 in the B1G) Boilermakers.
Last year’s downer came at home against Iowa, eventually a 34-24 win. Ohio State took a long time to get going and kept doing really dumb things, like letting tight ends outrun the entire secondary.
In 2012, the Buckeyes had to stage a furious rally against a middling 6-7 (3-5) Purdue squad. You’ll recall the game without seeing the gif below (but look at it anyway because it’s awesome—thank you based Kenny Guiton). That game came on the heels of an earlier downer—a 52-49 hang-onto-your-ass, fingernail-chewing win over 4-8 (2-6) Indiana.
The zombie year of 2011 was chock full of games that shouldn’t have been as close as they were, or should not have been losses. It started with a struggle over Toledo, continued with an implosion at Nebraska and a one-pass-completion, fart-noise victory at Illinois, an overtime loss at Purdue that featured a botched PAT on the would-be game-winning touchdown, an overthrown game-winning touchdown at Michigan and a one-score loss to the first of many mediocre-to-bad Florida teams in the TaxSlayer Gator Bowl.
Pre-Meyer and non-2011 teams were not immune. The vaunted 2010 team, stumblers only on the road against a good Wisconsin team, struggled at 7-6 (4-4) Illinois. We saw Jim Tressel’s aforementioned Purdue Harbor in ’09. The 2008 team sleepwalked against the 4-8 Ohio Bobcats at home.
In 2007, Tressel’s team took forever to get going against Akron and lost at home to a decent Illinois team even though Daniel Dufrene definitely fumbled a ball into the end zone. The season before, the Illini were not decent at all. Illinois went 2-10 (1-7) in 2006, and an Ohio State team that went to the national championship game beat it only by seven points. No. 2 Michigan was the only other team to finish within 17 points of Ohio State during the regular season that year, and the Wolverines got a late cosmetic score to finish within three.
The National Champions of 2002 had five downer games–at Cincinnati, at Northwestern, at Wisconsin, at Purdue (again) and at Illinois.
The downer games predate Tresselball. John Cooper had perhaps his best team in 1999 but it blew a huge lead at home against a .500 Michigan State team. His Rose Bowl-winning team fell at home to Michigan, scoring only nine lousy points. Failure against That Team Up North was common for Cooper’s teams, but that one was particularly egregious, knocking the Buckeyes out of the national championship picture.
Earle Bruce’s teams routinely struggled against bad-to-middling Wisconsin teams. We could go on, but the horse has been beaten into a fine red mist at this point.
Over the course of any given season, Ohio State is no different than any other football team. There comes a time when a game is closer than it should be. Sometimes that game turns all the way in favor of the underdog. That didn’t happen on Saturday, although it could have. The will of J.T. Barrett was stronger than the agents of Chaos on that particular night in Beaver Stadium.
I discount the Virginia Tech game because it was more a culmination of scheme, outcoaching and a plethora of newbies at various important positions. Sure, the Hokies were an underdog in the game, but the biggest factor in the game was that it was the second ever game for Barrett and a rebuilt offensive line.
Was Saturday’s game at Penn State the downer game of 2014? Is Penn State better than we thought? Is Ohio State worse? Will there be another downer in the schedule ahead?
Hindsight will reveal all at season’s end.
