Ridicule from the Ohio State fan base grew so loud in the days leading up to kickoff against Akron that Buckeye captain Zach Harrison felt the need to tell the Saturday Skull Session crowd that “we hear you.”
Even in wins against Minnesota and Tulsa – teams that now have losses to the likes of Bowling Green and UC Davis this season – the Buckeyes looked far from impressive in long stretches on both sides of the ball. So inconsistent was Ohio State that, at least against Tulsa, the Columbus crowd at Ohio Stadium rained downed boos upon the Buckeyes more than once.
Those same groans and jeers returned in the first quarter Saturday, when Akron scored first to hand the Buckeyes their fourth-straight first-half deficit to begin the season. By the end of the 59-7 beating, though, those boos were an afterthought, as Ohio State finally did what it needed to do – and frankly what it was expected to do – in order to quiet some critics.
“Overall in the game, I thought we did some good things, I thought that there’s still some things to build on, of course,” Day said. “But you could certainly see there’s a lot of guys out there that desperately need these snaps and this experience to keep building. And that’s the idea is that if we keep building, then we’ll have a chance to get to where we want to be by the end of the season.”
Akron may not have been a stiff enough opponent for the Buckeyes to make any kind of real statement, but after finally putting forth a dominant, four-quarter display on both sides of the ball for the first time this season, Ryan Day and Ohio State can finally know they are capable of such a showing, even against a team that they were favored to beat by 48.
Making his first career start for an injured C.J. Stroud, Kyle McCord started slow, completing just four of his first eight passes, but the true freshman finished 13-for-18 for 319 yards, two touchdowns and an interception. It wasn’t likely to be a showing that creates a true quarterback controversy in Columbus, given that several of his biggest plays came on shovel-pass jet sweeps and quick outs, but the Buckeye passing game certainly rebounded from its poor showing against Tulsa.
Garrett Wilson and Jaxon Smith-Njigba combined for 217 yards and a touchdown while Chris Olave added another score, and the Buckeyes finally had the chance to show off their depth in the wide receivers room, as five-star freshman Emeka Egbuka gashed the Zips’ defense for 85 yards on his first career reception.
“The first drive’s always hectic, especially being in the position like Kyle was in,” Smith-Njigba said after the game. “But I knew things would definitely slow down, and that’s what happened and we took off from there.”
After his star turn in a record-breaking effort last week, TreVeyon Henderson picked up where he left off at running back, turning eight carries into 93 yards and two touchdowns. The true freshman entered the game averaging 9.1 yards per carry, and finished Saturday with an average of 11.6 for the night. Master Teague got in the act as well, punching in two scores with 71 yards on eight carries for his finest performance since last season’s 169-yard outing against Indiana.
The Buckeyes finished with 622 yards of total offense for the game, and they were supposed to. The output was less impressive than it was expected, but anything less than meeting those expectations would have been a disappointment.
Perhaps more inspiring, though, was Ohio State’s defensive effort, given the nationwide scrutiny it has endured since the second half of the 2020 season. Akron racked up 55 yards and a touchdown on its second drive of the season to score its only touchdown of the game, but the Zips finished with just 229 total yards of offense on the night.
“There were some strides in the right direction,” Day said of the defense. “I thought we were aggressive overall, which was good, and I thought we tackled well.”
The struggling pass rush came alive, sacking Akron quarterbacks nine times, with 2020 All-American tackle Haskell Garrett claiming three of those himself to approach Ohio State’s single-game record of four. With the Zips threatening to score again in the waning moments of the game, defensive tackles Ty Hamilton and Tyleik Williams closed the show with back-to-back sacks to halt the Akron offense and end the contest.
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— Ohio State on BTN (@OhioStateOnBTN) September 26, 2021
“The sacks don’t really matter, it just matters that we played undeniable defense tonight as a defensive front,” Garrett said. “So that’s all I was worried about.”
In fact, while Akron starting quarterback DJ Irons started the game 7-for-11 with 63 yards – including six straight completions and a touchdown at one point in the first quarter – the Zips quarterback finished 7-for-18 for 52 yards and two interceptions after that point.
The Buckeye secondary tallied its second pick-six in as many weeks, when team tackles leader Ronnie Hickman intercepted an Irons pass at the 4:43 mark of the second quarter to make a 46-yard house-call that extended the Buckeye lead to 35-7.
“Some of these guys just don’t have a ton of banked reps, and now they’re building on them. Ronnie Hickman is a great example of that,” Day said. “He’s played a few games now, he makes that interception, and he’s starting to build a little bit of a reputation for being a guy who’s playing really good football right now. Many people didn’t really know who Ronnie was four weeks ago. Now he’s really doing it.”
Running the ball was hardly an option for Akron for most of the night, either. The Zips managed just 76 yards on 40 attempts. Through three games, an Ohio State defense that has seen its coordinator effectively benched and its scheme called into question either limited one element of an opposing offense or the other, with no in between. The Buckeyes shut down the Akron offense altogether on Saturday, even without starters like Cameron Brown, Tyreke Smith and Taron Vincent available for the game.
It’s unlikely the Buckeyes were ever capable of dominating Akron to the point that fan concerns could be curbed entirely heading into the Big Ten schedule. But with a thorough blowout from pillar to post, the team avoided the struggles that led to the criticism it received over the last few weeks.
As small a step as that may be for the Buckeyes, it is forward movement for the program nonetheless, and that was all it needed to show in the final non-conference game of the season.
