As a few of his players headed up the tunnel toward the locker room, unwilling to stick around to sing Carmen Ohio after a stunning loss, Urban Meyer was alone in the corner of the end zone. Ohio State’s head coach stood with a stone-faced expression and both hands inside his pockets.
This didn’t last long — 20 seconds, maybe. As the Ohio State marching band played the introduction to the school’s alma mater, junior running back Bri’onte Dunn quickly came and stood next to Meyer. The two put their arms around each other.
As the words were quietly sung, the look on Meyer’s face didn’t change much throughout the two-minute song. Many of his players shared similar facial expressions. Senior linebacker Joshua Perry had tears running down his face.
The scene told the whole tale. In the waking minutes after a shocking 17-14 last-second loss to ninth-ranked Michigan State, the Buckeyes had no idea what had happened.
“That was a very poor performance,” Meyer would say later.
This was a team that hadn’t lost a game since September of 2014. It had won 23-straight times, a Big Ten championship and national championship. It was a two-touchdown favorite at home playing against a team that didn’t have its all-conference starting quarterback.
Losing seemed impossible and yet it happened. That’s why the scene at the end was so striking.
“Come out here, play a tough game against a top-10 opponent, especially for me on my senior day, it’s highly emotional and then you just can’t pull it off,” Perry said. “It’s a really tough feeling.”
Running back Ezekiel Elliott was candid in his postgame comments, questioning Ohio State’s playcalling and wondering why he was left carrying the ball just 12 times at the end of the game. Quarterback J.T. Barrett seemed at a loss for answers as to why the Buckeyes were able to amass just 132 yards of total offense against a Michigan State defense that had been far from dominant all season.
“I think we just didn’t execute tonight, that was the main thing,” Barrett said. “We didn’t play well and we have to get better.”
Expectations for this Ohio State team have been sky high all season long, but this team certainly hadn’t looked like it was supposed to throughout the first 10 games of the season. The Buckeyes had been able to get by because they were playing inferior opponents who simply couldn’t match their talent level.
That caught up to them Saturday against the Spartans. Michigan State, though it was playing without star quarterback Connor Cook, was able to match Ohio State and then some. The Spartans outcoached, outplayed, out-executed the Buckeyes and, frankly, deserved to win the game.
“We lost the line of scrimmage and obviously you start loading up the box in those kind of situations and we were — the passing game was just, it was not there,” Meyer said. “We tried inside, outside and they beat us at the line of scrimmage and were were unable to execute in the throw game.”
Ohio State was stunned by this loss. The players showed it. Meyer showed it, too. The Buckeyes had control of their fate in their request to repeat as national champions and now it’s completely out of their hands. Ohio State must beat Michigan next weekend and Penn State must upset Michigan State for the Buckeyes to make it to Indianapolis for the Big Ten championship game.
For now, though, the emotions of experiencing a loss for the first time in over a year is something that’s going to stick with many inside the Ohio State locker room.
“This is part of football. You wish all the time you can win every game, but you’re going to lose some,” Barrett said. “With that, I think it’s one of those deals where you see where you’re at as a team. You can bow your head and turn the other way or you can lift your head up.”
