A lot can change in five years of college football.
Only three current Buckeyes (Mitch Rossi, Jerron Cage and Bradley Robinson) remain from the program’s 2017 roster. All but four members of the Ohio State coaching staff (Ryan Day, Larry Johnson, Kevin Wilson and Tony Alford) have turned over since then, including the head coach.
Day was a first-year co-offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach for the Buckeyes half a decade ago, the last time Ohio State prepared to play Iowa, and now he runs the show as the fourth-year head coach in Columbus. Despite all those changes, Day hasn’t forgotten about what happened in the programs’ most recent meeting.
In fact, Iowa’s 55-24 upset of the Buckeyes has been at the forefront of Day’s mind at the start of the week.
“That's a scar that doesn't go away. And yeah, I've felt it this week for sure,” Day said at his Tuesday press conference at the Woody Hayes Athletic Center. “That week in particular, we were just coming off the Penn State win, which was an emotional win. Going into Kinnick, which is a very difficult place to play, and we turned the ball over. First play of the game was a pick-6, and then we fought ourselves back but then turned the ball over too many times. That was a tough day for all of us.”
The circumstances surrounding the 2017 meeting and Saturday’s matchup aren’t altogether dissimilar. Ranked No. 3 in the country and on a six-game win streak before the Nov. 3, 2017 tilt, Ohio State was more than a 20-point favorite against a Kirk Ferentz-led Hawkeye squad. This year, the Buckeyes rank No. 2 in the nation, hold a 6-0 record coming off a bye week and opened as a 27-point favorite.
But Day and company will do everything in their power to ensure the result of the forthcoming contest is starkly different.
Last time, the Hawkeyes returned a J.T. Barrett interception for a touchdown just eight seconds into the action, and even after Ohio State tied things up 17-all in the second quarter, Iowa rattled off 31 unanswered points – including four straight touchdowns – to put the game well out of contention by the fourth quarter.
“Any time you have a scar like that, it's real. And we've talked about it a lot to our staff, we've talked a lot about it to our players, we've talked a lot about it as an offensive staff and we'll continue to talk about it.”– Ryan Day
It wasn’t one for the books for the Ohio State defense. On second thought, perhaps it was. Iowa’s 55 points were the most scored on the Buckeyes since 1994, and Ohio State hasn’t allowed that many points in any game since. The only team to even crack 50 against the scarlet and gray since then was the undefeated 2020 Alabama squad that hung 52 on the Buckeyes in a national championship win.
But both Day and Wilson, who also remembers the game not-so-fondly, cited the early offensive error as a critical moment that gave Iowa momentum right off the bat.
Ohio State won’t have the disadvantage of playing in Iowa City on Saturday, but Wilson said even at home, the Buckeyes will have to be cautious not to hand the Hawyekes any reason to get excited early on.
“Especially on the road, energizing their crowd, and all that – same deal with them coming here. The chance for them to start with success kind of deflates things,” Wilson said Tuesday. “So the game's a lot of momentum. You got to overcome, play steady and play through the ebbs and flows. But that definitely ignited them, and of course they played tremendous that day and got after us in a good way.”
Barring utter catastrophe for the Buckeyes, Ohio State won’t have to worry about Iowa challenging its 2017 point total on Saturday. The Hawkeye scoring offense ranks fourth-worst in the country at 14.7 points per game, and its 238.8 average yards of offense are dead last in the FBS. Iowa hasn’t scored more than 27 points in any game this year, and that was against Nevada and Rutgers. The Hawkeyes have failed to score more than seven points in three of their first six games.
As far as offense generated by the defense, that’s certainly a possibility come Saturday. The Hawkeyes have returned both a fumble and an interception for six points, and only six teams in the country have more defensive touchdowns.
C.J. Stroud threw the first pick-6 of his career in his last performance against Michigan State, and the Heisman Trophy frontrunner is on a three-game interception streak entering this weekend. The Iowa defense has forced six interceptions through six games, and cornerback Cooper DeJean has three of them.
Turnovers are crucial to any upset effort, and the Iowa offense could sure use some help in the scoring department if it’s to knock off the undefeated Buckeyes. For all those reasons, Day is using the 2017 game as an example to his coaching staff and players as they prepare to avenge the aforementioned loss.
“Any time you have a scar like that, it's real,” Day said. “And we've talked about it a lot to our staff, we've talked a lot about it to our players, we've talked a lot about it as an offensive staff and we'll continue to talk about it.”
On paper, the 2017 game shouldn’t play much of a factor in this weekend’s contest. Nor is the margin of error for the Buckeyes – on either side of the ball – as small as Day and Wilson might want their team to believe.
To many eyes, Ohio State has looked like the best team in the country through the first half of its regular season schedule, and it faces an opponent in Iowa that has a loss to an Iowa State team currently on a four-game losing streak on its résumé. Not to mention a 7-3 win over South Dakota State, which may be even more damning.
But the second a team feels no threat may be the moment complacency kicks in, and that’s what Day is hoping to avoid as he tries to right a five-year-old wrong this weekend.
“This team is always difficult to beat, doesn't matter what year it was, or what year it is. And that year was no different than it is this year,” Day said.
