Playing “Looser” Key for Ohio State Offense After Slow Start vs. Akron

Asked in the week leading up to Ohio State’s season opener if he thought the Buckeyes’ offense was in a better rhythm than it was going into last season, Ryan Day gave a hesitant response.

“We'll see after the first couple of games,” Day said before pausing for a few seconds. “Yeah, we'll see. We'll see. I mean, I do feel like we've had some really good days of practice. I feel like we've had a couple of really good moments in some scrimmages. Still looking to be more consistent. Still where our expectations is, my expectations of where we are and where we are right now, we're not close, but I didn't expect us to be either.”

In the first half of Saturday’s season opener against Akron, it was apparent that Ohio State’s 2024 offense remains a work in progress. Against an opponent that the Buckeyes were favored to beat by nearly 50 points, Ohio State scored touchdowns on just two of its six first-half possessions, gaining just 42 combined yards on its other four first-half drives.

In the end, though, Ohio State still cruised to a lopsided 52-6 victory over the Zips, scoring touchdowns on all of its first three possessions of the second half (with the defense adding two second-half scores of its own) before Will Howard and most of the Buckeyes’ other offensive starters checked out of the lineup.

Given Day’s remarks during his Tuesday press conference, Ohio State’s first-half offensive clunkiness probably shouldn’t have come as a shock. After all, Ohio State’s starting lineup on Saturday included four returning starters from last season (TreVeyon Henderson, Emeka Egbuka, Josh Simmons and Josh Fryar). With Howard playing his first game as the Buckeyes’ quarterback and veteran left guard Donovan Jackson absent from the lineup because he’s still working his way back from a preseason injury, some growing pains were to be expected for the Buckeyes’ offense in game one regardless of opponent.

Day said after the game that he thought the Buckeyes played too tentatively on offense in the first half.

“I think just across the board they were a little uptight early on. I think they were kind of worked up. And you saw a couple things off and we got ourselves off-schedule,” Day said.

Conversely, he felt the Buckeyes’ second-half offensive success resulted from playing with more confidence.

“I thought we sort of settled in and started to have more fun, and we started to play a little looser, which is the way we need to play,” Day said. “I thought we were a little bit uptight early on, and we can't play like that. We gotta come out of the gates playing loose.”

Howard, who completed just six of his first 16 passing attempts for 76 yards but went 11-of-12 for 152 from there, had a similar assessment to Day regarding the offense’s slow start and strong finish.

“One of our goals in this game was to play clean,” Howard said. “I feel like we didn't really do that in the first half. But at the end of the day, we just kind of had to get together and say, settle down, just play our game. Don't think about it too much. Don't let the fact that it's maybe our first time playing the Shoe (be a distraction), you've got to settle in and play football. And I think we did a good job of that in the second half, but we definitely need to work on starting a little faster, starting a little better, and not having those mistakes that we had in the first half, me personally included in that.”

The potential for Ohio State’s offense to develop into a championship-caliber unit this season was apparent with how the first-team offense finished against Akron. Jeremiah Smith already looks like a superstar, while Carnell Tate’s 34-yard touchdown showed he can also be elite alongside established star Emeka Egbuka. TreVeyon Henderson looked as explosive as ever to start his senior season, gaining 83 yards from scrimmage on only 10 touches (eight carries, two catches), while Quinshon Judkins found more success as the game progressed, finishing with 55 yards and a touchdown on 13 carries. Howard showed he can be a running threat from the quarterback position.

The offensive line remains the Buckeyes’ biggest question mark, but they didn’t allow any sacks against Akron; the run blocking up front left plenty of room for improvement, but OSU still finished the game with 5.2 yards per carry without its best run blocker in Jackson.

Ohio State will face far better defenses than Akron’s as the season progresses, but there will be plenty of reason to be encouraged if the Buckeyes can start next week’s game against Western Michigan the way they finished offensively in week one. They’ll spend the next six days looking to build upon what they did well and fix what they didn’t before hosting the Broncos on Saturday night (7:30 p.m., Big Ten Network) at Ohio Stadium.

“I think overall, the bottom line coming out of the game is I thought we played hard. I thought that we got into a rhythm in the second half, played looser, played aggressive,” Day said. “I felt we were a little bit uptight early on and pressed a little bit. That's kind of how I feel, but we'll take a look at the film and go from there.”