Losses hurt. Shutouts are worse. Shutout losses on the second biggest stage in college football are about as bad as it gets.
A few weeks ago, I wrote a requiem for a record; in Ohio State's last game against Clemson, they broke what was easily my favorite Buckeye statistic, that they had never lost to anyone, ever, when scoring 35 or more points. When Clemson sent that particular point of pride straight into the trash, I figured that it probably couldn't get any more irritating or humiliating than that. I was wrong.
Among the many things that Aren't Supposed To Happen To Ohio State, getting shut out is one of them. Actually, the same applies to their current head coach, which is maybe why this particular loss hurts so much. Clemson has, once again, rewritten the Ohio State record book, which in this instance goes all the way back to the 1920s.
But more on that in a second. Let's start with Urban.
First time this man has EVER been shutout as a head coach. pic.twitter.com/Y5zCXd8mNq
— ESPN CollegeFootball (@ESPNCFB) January 1, 2017
This is true. Urban Meyer has coached 195 games as a college football coach, and had never been shut out.
For most coaches, this is an irritating footnote. But for a coach like Urban Meyer, who has made his mark at every stop in his career with explosive and dominant offenses, this loss could potentially change the trajectory of his career, especially given that it seems to be the culmination of two straight seasons where the offense has regressed. He will have to make major changes across the board if he wants to keep his reputation as the most dangerous offensive coach in the country, as Clemson laid bare some of the most glaring deficiencies in his system.
Secondly, this is the first Ohio State team that's been shutout since 1993. That particular shutout was a 28-0 loss against Michigan, which is bad enough, but what's worse is that 23 season streak was the longest in the Big Ten. The only other program coming close had been Nebraska, which hasn't been shutout since 1996. After that, it's Indiana and Iowa, who both were last shutout on the same day in 2000. It was a small but impressive sign of the kind of dominance that the Buckeyes have exerted in the Big Ten and the college football world as a whole, and that's gone too.
So that's pretty bad, but it gets worse. As of last night, Ohio State has participated in 48 bowl games and hadn't been the victim of a shutout in any of them since their very first, the 1921 Rose Bowl against Cal (also a 28-0 loss). That streak is also dead.
The lesson from this is that while this isn't a mind-bendingly awful existential defeat that makes me reconsider my direction in life, it's still historically significant enough to make Urban Meyer at least seriously reevaluate how he does things, especially offensively. One of the biggest problems that Ohio State had in 2016 was forming an offensive identity, and in the end it caused them to be humiliated on a national stage.
If they want to get back to where they were before Clemson crushed them flat, Urban Meyer and Ohio State better make sure that they use the offseason wisely.
