Larry Johnson brought the Buckeyes into East Lansing and took care of business.
No matter that they had a depleted roster and coaching staff. They beat Michigan State anyway, 52-12, even without Ryan Day, three assistant coaches (Greg Mattison, Matt Barnes and Corey Dennis), three of the top four tackles on the depth chart (Thayer Munford, Nicholas Petit-Frere and Paris Johnson), their starting center (Josh Myers), starting middle linebacker (Tuf Borland), and two other key pieces of the defense who rotate heavily (Josh Proctor and Tyler Friday).
Despite the cancelled game a week prior, the unavailable players and coaches and the abnormal lead-up to Saturday, Ohio State plowed over the Spartans to improve to 5-0 with only one game – home against Michigan – remaining in the regular season. Let’s begin this week’s stock report.
Stock Up
Max Wray
It’s nearly impossible to overstate the complete lack of in-game experience Wray had entering the weekend.
Yes, he’s in his third year as a Buckeye. Yes, it’s true he was a top-150 recruit out of Franklin, Tennessee, in the 2018 cycle with scholarship offers from Alabama, Clemson, Georgia, Texas, USC and a slew of other high-powered programs. But his Ohio State career up until Saturday had lacked any momentum. A lot of times, you can tell who’s rising in the coaches’ minds and who’s impressing in practice by listening to whose names they bring up unprompted. Wray’s name had rarely come up in interviews, and he got passed by several younger players on the depth chart.
He didn’t get off the bench as a true freshman in 2018. He played four games on special teams in 2019. He played one offensive snap in the third game of the 2020 season. Yet on Saturday, the Buckeyes turned to him when they, quite literally, had almost no other options. And what did Wray do? He delivered.
Wray wasn’t always perfect, but who is? He consistently got the job done as the starting right tackle who’d played one snap as an offensive lineman in two and a half seasons. He was steady as a pass protector and solid in the run game. For somebody who’d been looked over for the past couple of years, it had to have felt good to get the opportunity he’d long waited for and prove himself capable of getting the job done.
With uncertainty surrounding the COVID-19 outbreak, it’s unclear when Munford, Petit-Frere or Johnson will be back on the field. So if Wray gets another crack at starting, Ohio State needs another performance like this one.
Greg Studrawa
With so many absences up front, things had a chance to go wrong in a bad way. That didn’t happen, though.
Wray (right tackle), Dawand Jones (left tackle) and Matthew Jones (left guard) were making their first career starts, and Harry Miller moved over to center from left guard, and they largely were solid. The biggest issue was Miller’s wild snaps, which got better as the game progressed.
Studrawa can get a lot of crap on the recruiting trail, but he deserves some props for ensuring the line was up to par over the weekend.
Trey Sermon
A long time coming, huh?
Buoyed by runs of 64 and 25 yards, he picked up a season-high 112 yards and his first touchdown of the fall on 10 carries. That’s the type of game Sermon envisioned having when he left Oklahoma to play his last season in college as a Buckeye.
In particular, that 25-yard jaunt down the field was the kind of run that’s been missing from Ohio State’s tailbacks. He made a quick cut, ran through a would-be tackler at the line of scrimmage, made the safety miss with a juke and nearly scored. Tony Alford needs to find a way to make that type of run a more common occurrence.
Disruptive Defensive Tackles
I’m questioning if we should even include Tommy Togiai and Haskell Garrett in the Stock Up portion of this article anymore. Can it get any higher?
At this point, it’s fair to wonder this: If Justin Fields, Chris Olave and Garrett Wilson are the three best players on this team, are Togiai and Garrett the fourth and fifth players on that list? Some others, including Wyatt Davis, Petit-Frere, Munford and Pete Werner, have strong cases. But Togiai and Garrett have played themselves into that conversation.
Tyreke Smith
Finally, Ohio State’s starting to see more than just occasional flashes from Smith, a junior defensive end who’s seemed to be on the precipice of a breakout for multiple years. He recorded three tackles, including one of his team’s three sacks, on Saturday.
Getting more from him as an edge rusher would do wonders for the Buckeyes.
Justin Fields
What more is there to say?
As I wrote on Saturday, a healthy Fields makes anything possible. The College Football Playoff selection committee surely knows that, too.
First game in two weeks and Justin Fields has already found the end zone
— ESPN (@espn) December 5, 2020
ABC pic.twitter.com/04SjCkHdcd
CJ Stroud
Late-game, garbage-time snaps matter to youngsters on a college football roster who need to get used to in-game action. Jack Miller played six of them in the season-opener against Nebraska and CJ Stroud got off the bench for a single snap versus Rutgers. Those moments are helpful to young players, especially quarterbacks.
But in terms of what they tell the outside world, they pale in comparison to emergency quarterback duty. When Justin Fields went out for a snap midway through Ohio State’s second drive of the second quarter, we got to see that scenario. And who came in? Stroud.
The competition between him and Miller might be tight. But for at least this weekend, we learned Stroud was the true backup quarterback.
Stock Down
Anybody Wanting To Learn About Ohio State’s Secondary
If you’re trying to make grand, sweeping judgements about the future of the defensive backfield following Saturday’s game, save yourself some time and just don’t.
Michigan State, as expected, had an abysmal offense with a hopeless passing attack for much of the day. That was apparent early on, and even though Payton Thorne did his best to turn it around, the Spartans weren’t coming remotely close to striking fear into a team that had allowed nearly 500 passing yards the game before.
No doubt, there were some interesting aspects of the afternoon game. Marcus Hooker knocked down a pass and made an important third-down tackle just in front of the sticks. Marcus Williamson got antsy which led to a 55-yard completion to Jayden Reed. Ronnie Hickman and Bryson Shaw played their first real snaps, seemingly getting test runs. Shaun Wade secured a diving, acrobatic interception.
But given the level of competition on Saturday, try to avoid letting this weekend drastically change your opinions.
Distribution Through The Air
One thing to watch in future seasons: Is the lack of spreading the ball around a product of having Chris Olave and Garrett Wilson on the team or is it what Ohio State wants to do going forward?
On Saturday, Olave and Wilson combined for 13 catches for 198 yards and two touchdowns. The rest of the team recorded four catches for 1 yard. Olave and Wilson were targeted 17 times. Everybody else – including one for Wyatt Davis(!) – combined for seven targets.
This is a throw certain trophy-winners make.
— Big Ten Network (@BigTenNetwork) December 5, 2020
We're not saying, we're just saying. @justnfields and @OhioStateFB have been dominant today: pic.twitter.com/mhbmPa5uox
Rotating wide receivers and, thus, getting a bunch of guys involved was a hallmark of offense in the Urban Meyer era, and Ryan Day continued doing so last year – even though the slot was mainly filled by K.J. Hill without a true backup. Maybe Brian Hartline and Day prefer having their starters on the field more often and that’ll remain the case moving forward. It’s understandable, right? Why get the ball to other players when you can throw it to Olave and Wilson all day? But it could be a change in philosophy that’s worth keeping an eye on.
The Texas A&M-Over-Ohio State CFP Argument
The College Football Playoff selection committee had the Buckeyes ahead of the Aggies last week, and this week every single AP top-25 voter has Ohio State in front of Texas A&M.
It was debate fodder last week. It doesn’t feel like much of a discussion anymore.
Rocky Lombardi
The blonde locks are enviable. The stat line on Saturday, uh, was not.
He went 5-for-11 for 33 yards with an interception and three rushes for minus-9 yards before Payton Thorne entered the game and put together a respectable performance. So, that leaves us with one question.
How?
