On one of the doors at Ohio State’s indoor practice facility sits not one, but two signs that read ‘Beat Northwestern.’ The giant video board, which once declared the Woody Hayes Athletic Center to be ‘the land of the wolves,’ no longer displays that mantra. “Beat Northwestern,” it reads.
There’s a clear message around the team this week. Nothing else matters.
“It’s gotta be tunnel vision,” senior center Pat Elflein says. “There’s no other option.”
This is hardly a new thing in football and in sports. The “one game at a time” saying is one of the oldest clichés in the book. But Urban Meyer and some of his players admitted Wednesday after practice it might have been hard to ignore a lot of the outside talk.
Ohio State entered last Saturday’s game against Penn State as the No. 2-ranked team in the country. Most had the Buckeyes pegged as serious College Football Playoff contenders — and most still do despite a loss to the Nittany Lions — and many were already starting to look ahead to the Nov. 26 showdown with archrival Michigan.
“It’s a little bit a product of the College Football Playoff and it’s a product of — because it’s such attention and great for the sport, great for us,” Meyer said. “We’re such a young team, we better focus on playing a young team that’s on a roll right now so that’s the reason we do that. It’s just focus.”
“I think this week the focus has really just been we’re playing Northwestern and we can’t get ahead of ourselves,” senior linebacker Joe Burger added. “Some of that might have happened the past couple of weeks. Everyone is trying to blow up The Game and right now we’ve blocked off everything else and we’ve focused on what’s happening this Saturday.”
Let’s be clear: Ohio State didn’t overlook Wisconsin, a top-10 opponent on the road. The Buckeyes didn’t look past Penn State, another quality team that plays in one of college football’s toughest atmospheres, either. It would be rather foolish to think Ohio State was looking ahead to a late November matchup in mid-October, but perhaps it did get caught up in the hype a bit.
The Buckeyes got beat and they accept that. But what that stunning 24-21 loss last weekend taught Ohio State is simple: Focus on the next game and that alone.
“We came in and got back to work like I said last week after the game,” middle linebacker Raekwon McMillan said. “It was the same demeanor that we always practice. We always go hard every day in practice, but it’s about coming back and doing what we’re supposed to do this week.”
The Wildcats present the Buckeyes with a stiffer challenge than many thought they would just a few weeks back. After starting 0-2, with one of those losses coming to an FCS team, Northwestern is riding a three-game winning streak and turned its season around.
Ohio State would certainly like to have a non-quality opponent roll into town, but such is life. The Wildcats have the Buckeyes' attention.
“That’s as improved a team as I’ve ever seen from beginning to now,” Meyer said of the Wildcats. “Three big wins, two on the road. Defining wins.”
The date with Michigan is still five weeks away. Ohio State knows it's there, it knows the Wolverines are just as good as they are this season. It's likely to be an epic showdown at Ohio Stadium with a lot on the line.
But not if the Buckeyes don't take care of their own business first. And because their margin for error is now gone following last weekend's loss in Happy Valley, all attention has been turned toward the most important game on the schedule.
The next one.
“We’re getting back to and not taking for granted the way we prepare and what got this program to where it is today,” Elflein said. “We really had to take a step back and reflect on why this program is where it’s at and really lock in on what got us there and continue to do that this week.”
Tunnel vision, indeed.
