Ohio State Has Historically Great 54-Point Performance Against Iowa Even Though Its Offense Wasn’t As Sharp As Usual

Ohio State scored only one touchdown on its first 10 possessions, ran the ball for only 66 yards on 30 carries and had its second-fewest total yards since Ryan Day became head coach against Iowa.

The Buckeyes still scored more points than any other team had ever scored against Iowa in Kirk Ferentz’s 24-year tenure coaching the Hawkeyes. They scored more than twice as many points as any other team had scored against Iowa this season and only five fewer points than the Hawkeyes allowed in their first six games combined. For betting purposes, Ohio State hit the over by itself in its 54-10 win.

Anyone who watched Saturday’s game would acknowledge Ohio State’s offense was nowhere near its best against the Hawkeyes. Yet you’d never guess that by only looking at the final score.

Ohio State’s defense certainly played a huge role in that, forcing six turnovers and scoring seven points by itself when Tommy Eichenberg returned an interception for a 15-yard touchdown. The Buckeyes started possessions in Iowa territory six times, decreasing the need for Ohio State’s offense to string together long drives.

Given that, Ryan Day thought the Buckeyes should have won Saturday’s game by even more points than they did.

“You look at the end of the game; boy, the score could have even been different,” Day said in his postgame press conference.

Much like the season opener against Notre Dame, when the Buckeyes scored only 21 points, Ohio State’s defense was its dominant unit against Iowa, holding the Hawkeyes to only 158 yards. The defense was expected to dominate Iowa, which already ranked dead last in the FBS in offensive yards per game before Saturday, but the degree to which it dominated – mainly by creating takeaways – was nonetheless impressive.

Day and C.J. Stroud felt the defense deserved most of the credit for Saturday’s win. Stroud said the defense “played their butts off,” and Day was impressed with Jim Knowles’ play calling and the Buckeyes’ defensive execution.

“I would have liked to definitely executed better on offense early in the game. But I think the story’s about the defense and how well they played,” Day said.

Ohio State left 16 points on the table in the first half of the game as it settled for four field goals on drives that started in Iowa territory, including three drives that reached the red zone. While Ohio State kept its streak alive of scoring every time it has reached the red zone so far this season, the Buckeyes settled for more than field goals in the red zone (three) against Iowa than they did in all of their first six games combined – and Day says whether they score a touchdown is the only thing they look at when measuring success in the red zone.

“Touchdowns. Touchdowns. That's it. That's all we focus on,” Day said. “Now, when we can get field goals, certainly we need to get points and those are important to get but yeah, I'm gonna wish we had calls back. I’m gonna wish when we had plays back. But the No. 1 goal is to score touchdowns in the red zone. That’s a huge part of our plan to win. We've been good at that in the past. Not as good today.”

While Day was undoubtedly happy with how Ohio State’s defense and special teams – which, led by Caden Curry, effectively snuffed out a fake punt attempt to give the Buckeyes one of their possessions in Iowa territory – controlled the field position battle, he said he felt the Buckeyes had trouble getting into a rhythm on offense partially because they had so many drives start on Iowa’s side of the field. On a day when Ohio State’s average starting field position was at its 46-yard line, three of its five offensive touchdowns came on drives that started at or behind its own 45-yard line.

“It was weird because we were kind of in plus territory all day early on and just never got into a rhythm of just kind of throwing things because the field was getting a little compressed,” Day said. “And I think you saw when we had to move the ball down the field, we were a little bit better, and you get into a rhythm that way. That's probably the only way I could describe why that was.”

Stroud didn’t put up Heisman-caliber numbers in the first half, when he threw for just 105 yards on 11-of-17 passing, and he threw an interception on the first play of the second half – marking the second time this year he’s done that, as he also did so against Rutgers – to Iowa’s Jack Campbell. After the interception, however, Stroud completed 10 of his final 12 passes for 181 yards and four touchdowns, giving the Buckeyes twice as many points on the final scoreboard as Michigan (the only other team to score more than 10 points against Iowa this year) had against the Hawkeyes on Oct. 1.

“You can have games like that where you're not really clicking early on, and you just got to get it going,” Stroud said. “So once we got it going, I felt like we became the dynamic offense that we know.”

Saturday’s game was indisputably the worst game of the season to date for Ohio State’s rushing offense, as the Buckeyes ran for over 100 yards fewer than they did in any of their first six games and averaged only 2.2 yards per carry after averaging at least 4.9 yards per rush in each of their first six games. With tougher challenges ahead on the schedule, including next week’s game against Penn State, that’s one particular area that the Buckeyes know they’ll need to be better in going forward.

“We're gonna have to go back and figure out how we run the ball better, that's for sure, and figure out how we're going to do that,” Day said. “To say I'm concerned, I wouldn't say that. But we're gonna need better play moving forward.”

In large part because of their struggles in the run game, the Buckeyes finished Saturday with only 360 total yards of offense, their second-fewest in any game under Day behind only the 2020 national championship loss to Alabama, in which the Buckeyes were held to 341 yards.

That said, Saturday wasn’t supposed to be an easy day for Ohio State’s offense, considering Iowa’s standing as one of the best defenses in the country. The fact that the Buckeyes still scored 54 points against one of the better defenses they’ll face all year speaks to how capable Ohio State is of dominating most teams it plays.

“When you're playing against a really good defense, a top-10 defense, it's not just going to happen all at once. It's not going to be fireworks every series,” Day said. “But I give Noah credit, we were able to put points on the board and keep that momentum going, and we felt like our defense was playing well. And we felt like if we had scored a few of those touchdowns down there in the red zone, it would have been a different first half. But that's OK – a lot to learn from there and grow.

“I think it was healthy for us to get a good challenge today.”