With Ohio State's offense ready to take the field after Indiana turned the ball over on downs, a flag flew and Urban Meyer imploded.
An official whistled his team's sideline for interference for its role in the celebration following the 4th down stop, and Meyer clearly thought the flag meant Indiana would get a first down. Ohio State led 31-17 with 5:15 left on the clock at the time of the penalty. The Hoosiers desperately went for it in their own territory in a last gasp effort to stay in the game but the penalty was enforced before the ensuing drive, moving J.T. Barrett and the offense back 15 yards.
“The sideline thing, I have to find out what happened. I think, one of our players just ran into him,” Meyer said. “So that would have been a devastating—it was after the ball was incomplete. But the way you said, it's uncharacteristic.”
After mostly coasting to a 4-0 start with victories over Bowling Green, Tulsa, Oklahoma and Rutgers, uncharacteristic things popped everywhere for the No. 2 Buckeyes in their 38-17 win over Indiana on Saturday.
Barrett threw for just 93 yards on nine incompletions, both with a touchdown and an interception. The downfield passing game is so vital to what Ohio State wants to do as an offense but Barrett never connected on one. He missed Curtis Samuel early and James Clark in the second half. He missed open receivers, instead either throwing incomplete or taking off on his own.
“Left a lot of pass offense on the field,” Meyer said. “That was the alarming thing and early turnover.”
“It's important because if you can't hit a deep ball then as a defense, they just sit on every route,” Barrett said. “Depend on a lot of short routes to get open but then if you pass and hit a deep ball, it opens up a lot of the offense. I didn't do a good job today completing the deep ball which is something I have to get better at.”
Barrett took responsibility for Ohio State's struggles through the air, though his receivers weren't always creating separation. Questions linger from the outside both because of how much Barrett ran the ball and the inconsistencies that popped up in the passing game either because he missed receivers or just missed throws. Something was off.
“Way out whack,” Meyer said. “Showed up a little bit and we were having trouble executing the pass game, and they were plus-oneing us in the box.”
“We had some minor mistakes, a couple balls that should have hit that didn’t,” Parris Campbell said. “We’ll learn from it and we’ve just got to clean it up. We have players all over the field that can make those plays and J.T. knows that. He knows if he can make those plays we’ll be fine.”
“He’s one of the best players, he’s one of the best teammates. I’m not in their locker room, I’m sure he’s a phenomenal leader,” Indiana coach Kevin Wilson said of Barrett. “That’s why those young players are playing so well. He might have been off today, but he’s human. I think J.T. Barrett is an awesome football player.”
Campbell's 91-yard kickoff return set up Barrett's 5-yard scoring scamper with 30 seconds left before halftime, a needed momentum shift for Ohio State after Richard Lagow found Mitchell Paige to make the score 17-10.
“And there it is right there. We scored with 30 seconds left. Went best—they scored with 1:03 and Lou Holtz used to always say the most critical times of the game where momentum—five minutes before the half and the first five minutes after the half,” Meyer said. “And that was a dominating play. And it was, obviously it wasn't just Parris.”
A track star in high school, Campbell getting ran down by an Indiana defender is a bit odd. But Barrett and Ohio State's offensive line helped get him off the hook for not finishing the huge return with points.
“I kind of got stumbled up,” Campbell said. “He grabbed the back of my shirt and kind of used it as a slingshot. I’ll get another one.”
The Buckeyes got another victory despite its struggles throwing the ball, both because of how it ran it (290 yards, four touchdowns) and the way Luke Fickell's defense made plays in key moments. Indiana missed on both of its 4th down tries, none bigger than the 4th-and-1 at the Ohio State 4-yard line with a little more than 10 minutes left and Ohio State leading by 14. Nick Bosa, Michael Hill and a host of others made their presence known in what ended up being the game-deciding stop.
“I was just exciting to get on the field on fourth down and have the chance to make a play for my team,” Bosa said. “They put the people in on goal line for a reason and just knocked him back, shed the block and made the tackle for loss.”
“Some of the hurry up, getting guys in and out, we've got our own stuff to work on but the reality is that 4-6, A-B, that relentless mentality to get a 4th down stop on the goal line,” Fickell said. “Huge, huge, huge momentum swings and things like that. They're doing exactly what the culture of the program is and what we ask them to do.”
Added Meyer: “That fourth down, that was the play of the day. And that's why we beat Indiana.”
It certainly helped immensely, considering the Buckeyes fell into the "run the quarterback and hope for the best" game plan for the majority of the second half. That strategy did not work in their lone loss of the 2015 season, and Meyer even admitted it is "real dangerous" to once again depend on Barrett's legs as a security blanket.
“You just don't want to get too much of that. But that's a little bit of, my security blanket is he's one of the best players in America,” Meyer said. “Go get a touchdown J.T.
“We had to win the damn game, and he's one of our best players. And some of the things they were forcing to do on the perimeter run game, they were giving us the look to have him run it instead of hand it off all the time, which ideally where they're handing it off. So once again well-defended, and I think we would all feel much better about ourselves if we hit three of those passes that are downfield because that's the kind of game it was.”
“If it's 4th-and-1 and they call my number, I'm not going to sit there and say, 'Coach I don't want to do that,'” Barrett said. “It's not like I was counting or anything like that. Just so happened to be 26 times.”
The 26 carries is a ton but above all it allowed Ohio State to grab its fifth win of the season. Off to a 2-0 start in conference play following a pair of home games, the Buckeyes now prepare to face a much more challenging Wisconsin team on the road under the lights. The Badger defense is better than Indiana's and Ohio State's offense took a step in the wrong direction on Saturday.
“Didn't play well, didn't do a good job surveying the defense and taking what they were giving me,” Barrett said. “I think at times I might have been greedy but that's not how I need to be. I need to read the defense and distribute the football and let our playmakers just go make plays.”
Ohio State will still be ranked in the top-5 even if it didn't look as dominant as the first month of the season. But the Buckeyes face issues and uneasiness after a victory. A victory is what is most important, however.
“A win’s a win. We won. Everybody needs to relax with that,” Price said. “At the end of the day, there are things we need to get better at. That’s the joy of coming back next week, to improve on the things that we didn’t do so well today and get better.”
Said Barrett: “We won a football game. I'm very grateful for that. Grateful for the teammates that we have and that was a good team in Indiana that we just had.”
“Let's get it fixed. We won by 21,” Meyer said. “It's much easier to fix if you win than if you lose. You guys saw it. You saw what they did last week. They beat Michigan State. So let's take that one move on and get ready for Wisconsin.”
