An Ohio State football team coached by Urban Meyer has never had less to play for with three games remaining in the regular season.
After suffering their second loss of the season – and in embarrassing, blowout fashion – at Iowa on Saturday, the Buckeyes (7-2, 5-1 Big Ten) appear to be all but eliminated from national championship contention, a reality that a postseason-eligible Ohio State team has never faced this early in November in Meyer’s tenure.
Aside from winning the national championship in 2014, Meyer’s Buckeyes made the College Football Playoff in 2016, won their first 10 games of the season in 2015 and were a Big Ten Championship Game win away from playing in the final BCS National Championship Game in 2013. The Buckeyes served a one-year postseason ban in 2012, but even then, the Buckeyes still had an undefeated season to play for, which they ultimately achieved.
That leads one to wonder whether the Buckeyes, who are used to competing for national championships and certainly entered this season with expectations of doing so again, will be motivated for their remaining games this season, knowing that their playoff hopes – barring nothing short of chaos in front of them – are likely dashed.
Meyer, however, expects his team to continue playing hard in the pursuit of wins. He also doesn’t think he needs to give his team any big speech to keep them motivated, either, because of the mentality that has built up within his team over the course of the season.
"That's something we work on not today, that's something we've been working on all year," Meyer said at his press conference Monday, two days after the Buckeyes’ 55-24 loss in Iowa City. "It's a process. It's a journey that we're on. And there's still plenty of great things ahead."
Ohio State still has a chance to win its first Big Ten championship since 2014. The Buckeyes still control their own destiny in that regard, with an upcoming game against Michigan State this Saturday that will determine who leads the Big Ten East with just two weeks to play in the regular season.
That’s one reason Meyer expects his team to remain motivated.
"This is something that we've been working on for a long time," Meyer said. "You still look at the standings and Ohio State and Michigan State are 1-2 in the Big Ten East."
Ohio State center Billy Price expressed a similar sentiment after Saturday’s game.
"The good thing is the Big Ten East … we are still in the driver’s seat for this right now," Price said. "That is first and foremost our goal is to win the Big Ten East itself. Win every week, take care of every opponent that we can, win the Big Ten East and the success that follows that is not necessarily our primary goal itself. So everything that we still want to play for is still in front of us."
Meyer also said he has tried to build "a very close team that cares about each other, that plays really hard," which should keep the Buckeyes focused on trying to finish out the season by winning as many games as they can.
“It's a process. It's a journey that we're on. And there's still plenty of great things ahead.”– Urban Meyer
Price spoke and tweeted about the Buckeyes’ "brotherhood" after Saturday’s game, and Ohio State defensive end Tyquan Lewis – the only other Ohio State player to meet with the media after Saturday’s game – said he and his teammates have a relationship with one another that will enable them to overcome the shocking defeat.
"You wake up tomorrow and you get another opportunity to do something special," Lewis said. "And everybody that’s a senior on this team, all the leaders, we share a special bond and that bond is so solid that nothing can crack us. You get a breath of fresh air tomorrow, and you turn your focus to the next game."
Ohio State has some significant issues that it must fix – Meyer pointed to ball security by his offense and inability to get off the field by his defense – to avoid losing more games like it did Saturday and earlier in the season against Oklahoma. Meyer also acknowledged he must be vigilant to ensure that his upperclassmen remain focused on the rest of the season instead of looking ahead to the NFL.
"That’s something you've got to watch," Meyer said. "That’s something that happened to us at Florida a little bit where guys, every player that comes to Ohio State has a dream of playing in the NFL, and they should. But you have to, whether it's agents, whether it's people in people's ear and those are all things you have to have constant conversation with them about and watch closely."
Nonetheless, Meyer expects his team to focus its full attention this week on the challenge it will face against Michigan State, which is also 7-2 and 5-1 in the conference this season and has defeated Ohio State in three of the last six meetings between the two teams.
"We've got to understand what we're going to play against. Great respect for them and they're playing well," Meyer said. "We're playing Michigan State this week. We got to really practice well and fix the turnover issue on offense and play a little better on defense."
