The level of competition wasn’t much in the way of a progress marker for Ohio State, but the Buckeyes cruised to a 59-7 win against Akron in which negative takeaways were kept at a minimum.
After a promising drive for the Zips early in the first quarter, the Buckeyes stifled Akron the rest of the way, giving up just 229 yards of total offense and forcing a pair of turnovers while the Ohio State offense almost tripled Akron’s firepower in terms of yardage.
Ohio State tallied just four sacks through the first three games of the season, but the Buckeye pass rush exploded for nine against Akron, and 2020 All-American defensive tackle Haskell Garrett had three of them himself. However, Garrett said he was less concerned about the sack total in particular than he was the quality of play along the front four.
“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.”
Sixth-year senior defensive tackle Antwuan Jackson, who started alongside Garrett, added a sack of his own on Saturday, and his second in the past two games. Jackson said disrupting the Zips’ pocket was crucial to the result for the Buckeyes, and said defensive line coach Larry Johnson challenged the unit to step up its game earlier this past week.
“It was very big. Coach J said it earlier in the week, we have to get more pressure, he put all the pressure on us this week,” Jackson said. So we showed what we can do, so that’s what we did in this game.”
Things were not all sunshine and rainbows for the Buckeye defense on Saturday though. Senior linebacker K’Vaughan Pope appeared to have a heated exchange with coaches on the sideline and left the field entirely in the second quarter. After making some unsavory remarks on Twitter after the game, it would stand to reason that Pope’s days are likely numbered in a Buckeye uniform, but Day did not say anything concrete about the matter after the game.
“Someone just told me, I guess there was something with a tweet or something,” Day said. “I’m gonna get the details about everything that happened before I say anything there.”
Day was asked about the subject a couple more times after the game, and went on to say that frustration over a lack of snaps was likely the cause of the blowup.
“What it really is is just a lot of guys, they want to play, and you can’t play everybody. And then frustration kicks in,” Day said. “I don’t really want to comment too much on that particular situation, but I certainly think it’s very isolated.”
Day also took the opportunity to address the recent transfer of senior linebacker Dallas Gant, which he did not seem to look on in a very favorable light given it transpiring three games into the season.
“In this day and age, guys can leave with four games because they can redshirt and if they want to go into the portal, that’s their prerogative. I have a hard time with that, because I think when you make a commitment to a team at the beginning of the year, you make a commitment to Ohio State and the Buckeyes, that’s what you do,” Day said. “One of the hard things is you have to play certain guys, and you have to make some decisions on who is playing in those games, and you really count on the guys to still be great teammates if they’re not getting on the field.”
On offense, the Buckeyes rolled against Akron, putting up 622 yards of total offense with 385 passing yards split between Kyle McCord and Jack Miller in the absence of C.J. Stroud. McCord got the start as just a true freshman, and the former five-star recruit threw for 319 yards, two touchdowns and an interception.
It didn’t look pretty early, as McCord started just 4-for-8 passing, but the first-year QB eventually got things going to finish with a solid account of himself.
“I would say that he did not get fluttered and showed his confidence and I wasn’t worried about it at all,” Paris Johnson Jr. said after the game. “Nobody up front was worried about it.”
Stroud’s status remains unclear, but Day said the team may actually evaluate if he is healthy enough to play in next week’s road game against Rutgers as early as Sunday in practice.
“When it comes to C.J., we’ll kind of see that tomorrow. We’ll practice tomorrow, we’ll see how he’s doing,” Day said. “It seems like today he’s feeling stronger, feeling better. So we made that decision last Sunday, and now we’re gonna sit down tomorrow and kind of figure out what the plan for the week is. Hopefully we can get him going this week.”
