Winning the line of scrimmage is often the key to winning a football game. Ohio State failed to do that on both sides of the ball in its loss to Michigan two weekends ago.
Offensively, the Buckeyes ran for just 64 yards on 30 rushing attempts and also struggled in pass protection, allowing Michigan’s star defensive end Aidan Hutchinson to rack up a whopping 15 quarterback pressures, according to Pro Football Focus. Defensively, the Buckeyes allowed Michigan to rush for 297 yards and six touchdowns on 41 attempts, averaging 7.24 yards per carry – the fourth-highest rushing average ever allowed by Ohio State in a single game – while they also had zero sacks.
The Buckeyes also struggled to both run the ball (128 yards on 31 attempts) and stop the run (269 yards on 38 attempts) in their other loss this season against Oregon, creating a perception among many – including Michigan offensive coordinator Josh Gattis – that they’re a team that can be overpowered in the trenches.
“They're a good team. They're a finesse team, they're not a tough team,” Gattis said during a radio appearance last week. “And we knew that going into the game that we can out-physical them, we can out-tough and that was going to be the key to the game, and that's what we prepared for all year long.
“You saw earlier this year in the game they lost to Oregon, Oregon was the most physical team on the field. That's the way they lost, and we committed to that recipe, and it paid off.”
Asked directly about Gattis’ comments on Sunday, Ryan Day had no interest in engaging in a back-and-forth, replying with only one sentence.
“Yeah, I don’t really think much about that at all,” Day said.
That said, Day realizes the Buckeyes have to be much better at the line of scrimmage going forward than they were against Michigan. They’re going to face another big test in that area in the Rose Bowl against Utah, who ranks second in the Football Bowl Subdivision in rushing yards per attempt (5.61), 29th in rushing yards allowed per attempt (3.56) and fifth in sacks (42).
When the Buckeyes begin bowl practices on Friday, improving in the run game will be their top priority.
“I think there’s some things that we’ll get into certainly down the road, but immediately, we’ve gotta obviously do a better job stopping the run and running the football,” Day said when asked what the Buckeyes needed to work on in preparation for the Rose Bowl. “That’s the No. 1 thing that we recognize.
“Our goal every game is to win the line of scrimmage, is to run the football and be physical, play great defense. So we’ll continue that. And I think this bowl practice, we’ll have an opportunity to get back out there and really emphasize pad level, hand placement.”
The Buckeyes were successful in both running the ball and stopping the run in many of their games this season. Ohio State ranks just behind Utah with the third-most rushing yards per attempt (5.55) in the country this season and ranks 25th in rushing yards allowed per attempt (3.52). The Buckeyes held nine straight opponents to 113 yards or fewer before the Michigan game, while they’ve had six 200-yard rushing games this year.
Day specifically cited Ohio State’s 56-7 win over Michigan State, in which the Buckeyes rushed for 206 yards and two touchdowns while allowing just 66 yards and zero touchdowns to Michigan State’s rushing offense, as evidence that they can control the line of scrimmage against good competition when they play well.
“We’re capable of doing it,” Day said. “We’ve played against some really good rushing teams. You saw what happened in the Michigan State game, (Kenneth) Walker was one of the Heisman Trophy candidates leading into that game, and we really played well in that game. So it’s not like we’re not capable of doing it. We are. And we’ve played many games where we’ve run the ball really well. We’ve played in games where we’ve stopped the run really well.”
In two of the biggest games of the year, however, Ohio State was dominated at the line of scrimmage and lost as a result. And after it happened in the rivalry game, costing the Buckeyes a Big Ten Championship Game berth and crushing their College Football Playoff hopes, Day says Ohio State has to figure out exactly what went wrong in that game and fix it to make sure that doesn’t happen again.
“Identifying why that happened in that game is what’s critically important,” Day said. “And that’ll be played around here for the next month pretty often trying to figure out why that happened in that game.”
Ohio State didn’t lose to Michigan for the first time in 10 years solely because of its own faults, but also because the Wolverines are legitimately one of the best teams in college football this season. They punched their ticket to the College Football Playoff this past weekend by dominating the line of scrimmage once again in a 42-3 Big Ten Championship Game win over Iowa. Their offense ranks in the top 10 nationally in both rushing yards per carry and per game; Hutchinson could be the No. 1 overall pick in the 2022 NFL draft, and fellow Michigan defensive end David Ojabo is a projected first-rounder, too.
The Buckeyes also had what Day described as a “significant” number of players who were sick for the Michigan game. He said they couldn’t use that as an excuse, though.
“That doesn’t really matter. You’ve gotta overcome it,” Day said. “It sounds like losers’ lament when something like that comes up, so it’s not even really worth talking about.”
Michigan will be one of four teams vying for a national championship this year, but Ohio State has enough talent that it should be capable of beating anyone. The Buckeyes were only down one point at halftime against the Wolverines, but allowed Michigan to seize full control of the game and ultimately win by 15 after a 14-0 third quarter. So while Day gives the Wolverines credit for their success this season, he says that’s no reason for the Buckeyes to feel any better about coming up short.
“I think they have very, very good players, and they did a good job in the game. But I also think there were some things in that game that we could have done a lot better,” Day said. “And I think there was a time there in the third quarter there where if we had done some different things, we had a chance to really win the game. And it just got away from us. So now we gotta own it.”
