The Worst: The Fate of the 2004 Buckeyes Hung on a Single Leg Far Too Often for Comfort

I ask this rhetorically. I already have an answer for that question. That answer is yes.

And the reason why I answer yes to my own bogus question is because I have seen Schrödinger's football with my own human eyeballs, live and in person. Terrible things can lead to amazing, beautiful things, and may even be required for them.

In 2004 I was a sophomore at Ohio State, ready and eager to become emotionally invested in a Buckeye football team that I was completely and inexplicably confident in thinking would win a second national championship within just a few years. I had spent the summer of that year delivering auto parts and arguing with my Michigan fan coworker over which mega-recruit would alter the college landscape more: quarterbacks Justin Zwick or Chad Henne. He was right, but both of us were dumb.

Anyway, the long and short of it is that the Ohio State offense through the first half of the 2004 football season was a comedy of errors that resulted in a 3-3 record (with losses to Northwestern, Wisconsin, and Iowa) and a ton of doubt about the future direction of the program. Then Troy Smith and Ted Ginn, Jr. emerged as superstars and everything changed. But the post-hoc humor comes in the details.

Such as!

• Justin Zwick whipping the ball all over the field with absolutely no justification for him continuing to do so. Through the first six games of the 2004 season, Zwick threw one hundred and sixty passes (or roughly 27 per game, and this includes that he only threw 14 against Iowa as it become clear that having him throw dozens of additional passes weren't going to solve anything). He completed just 61 of those glorious hucks, but what really did him in was his six interceptions to just five touchdowns.
• Lydell Ross, a senior running back who people were praying would develop into something resembling a player capable of somewhat replicating the missing Maurice Clarett's production, was very, very, very bad. In the season opener against Cincinnati, Ross ran for 141 yards on just 17 carries. In his next 77 rushing attempts, he'd average 2.6 yards per carry, culminating against (oh nice) Iowa, when he had 10 carries for exactly zero yards in the 33-7 loss.
• The rest of the offense wasn't any less a mess. Northwestern beat Ohio State in overtime, which they definitely shouldn't have needed because the Wildcats rolled up 136 yards more than the Buckeyes did. Iowa outgained Ohio State by 277 yards. A passing game that featured Santonio Holmes, Ted Ginn, Jr., Anthony Gonzalez, and Roy Hall couldn't get the ball consistently to any of them during the first six games of 2004. Holmes had 224 yards receiving against Marshall and followed that up with 16 yards in the next game against NC State. This was a pattern.

But look: you take the good, you take the bad, you take them both, and there you have a 3-3 team. The 2004 defense was good but not amazing, and the offense was a tire fire. So... how did they manage to keep treading water? What was the magical elixir of life that kept hopes for an Alamo Bowl alive?

Mike freaking Nugent, that's what.

I'll let a young Johnny Ginter explain what exactly kicker Mike Nugent meant to the 2004 team, in his first ever article written for Eleven Warriors:

Though not a game saver (it was a tie at that point), it is easily conceivable that [Ohio State loses] that game if not for number 85. The less memorable but possibly even more significant game, however, was against NC State that took place a week later. In it, Nugent made five field goals in a 22-14 victory where Ohio State had 137 yards of total offense and averaged just over two yards per play. Without a consistent and brilliant kicker, [they] could have easily lost that game as well, and in the subsequent weeks would have been staring at a 1-5 start and probably the charred remains of Jim Tressel's reasonably priced midsized sedan.

Ignore the edits to gloss over the use of the first person possessive pronouns and instead focus on Mike Nugent's brilliance. Nuge was 12 for 14 in the first five games (he didn't even get a chance to slightly decrease the margin of defeat against Iowa) and also Ohio State's most effective and consistent offensive weapon.

This is a ridiculous thing to write and to think about, especially in the year of our Lord two thousand and twenty, but it's a real thing that happened and was actually kind of cool? Sort of?

I was at this game. It was completely amazing and kickass and everyone went absolutely bonkers as Mike Nugent bombed the hell out of a 55 yard field goal to dump dirt in the pants of a MAC team. And it was also stupid; the Buckeyes should never need a last second field goal to beat Marshall.

So sometimes maybe The Worst can also give opportunities for people to show their Best. The first half of the 2004 Ohio State football season was dire, but without complete offensive incompetence the legend of Mike Nugent might never be written. Ohio State fans might not be so earnestly and genuinely obsessed with things like punting and placekicking, which is frankly one of the most endearing aspects of the fanbase.

Mike Nugent, placekicker, was eventually named the 2004 Ohio State MVP. It wasn't a joke, or a gesture of respect to a senior captain, or some kind of sympathy thing: he earned that award because he was, in fact, the most valuable single player to that team.

That's hilarious and awesome and The Worst, maybe, but honestly also kind of The Best and I'm glad it happened.