Ohio State vs. Marshall Notebook: Jayden Fielding Benched for Kickoff Woes, Tyleik Williams’ Status “Day-to-Day” and Buckeyes Rotate at Right Guard

By Dan Hope on September 21, 2024 at 8:20 pm
Tyleik Williams
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After two games of mostly clean special teams play to start the season, Ohio State had multiple problems in the third phase of the game in its third game of the year against Marshall.

The most notable woes came on kickoffs, where Jayden Fielding kicked the ball out of bounds three straight times in the second quarter, giving Marshall’s offense the ball at the 35-yard line. The third such kickoff led to a Marshall touchdown before halftime and resulted in Fielding’s benching, as backup kicker Austin Snyder replaced Fielding on kickoffs for the remainder of the game as well as handling the Buckeyes’ final two extra kickoffs of the day.

The kickoff woes were uncharacteristic for Fielding, who has been Ohio State’s kickoff specialist since 2022 as well as its primary field goal kicker since 2023, so Ryan Day elected to have Fielding attempt to work through his mistakes following the first two kickoffs. Following the third kickoff, however, Day decided he had seen enough and gave Fielding the hook.

Day said Fielding would be evaluated to ensure that issues were not injury-related. Either way, ensuring that such kickoff woes don’t happen again will be a point of emphasis as the Buckeyes prepare to begin Big Ten play against Michigan State next weekend.

“We'll evaluate him and see if there's any tweak or something that happened in the hip or whatever, but either way, we can't have that,” Day said. “I mean, that's putting our defense in a terrible situation. Having three out of bounds and three drives start at the 35-yard line, that's completely ridiculous. So we've got to get that fixed, however we do that.

“You get to the point where you want to let somebody play through it, but then at another point, we've got to make a change. So I thought Austin did a nice job of stepping in there.”

Snyder, who had never kicked off in a game for Ohio State before, recorded touchbacks on two of his three kickoffs while the other was returned to the 20-yard line.

The other big miscue on special teams against Marshall came when Brandon Inniss muffed a punt that Marshall recovered at Ohio State’s 16-yard line, which would have put the Thundering Herd in prime position to potentially tie the game down only 14-7 early in the second quarter. Inniss got bailed out of that mistake, however, when Marshall was penalized for an illegal formation, forcing the Thundering Herd to redo the punt.

Inniss fielded the second punt cleanly for a fair catch at the 14-yard line, and Quinshon Judkins ran for an 86-yard touchdown on the very next play to make it a 21-7 game. Ohio State would lead by at least two scores for the remainder of the contest.

Despite the muff, Ohio State kept Inniss in at punt returner for the entire game and he rewarded that decision with a 21-yard punt return in the third quarter that could have potentially gone all the way if he hadn’t slipped on the turf – though Ohio State still scored a touchdown one play later when Jeremiah Smith took a short pass for a 53-yard touchdown.

Inniss also handled kickoff returns for the first time in his Ohio State career against Marshall, replacing Jayden Ballard in that role after Ballard misplayed Western Michigan’s only kickoff of the Buckeyes’ previous game. Inniss did not make any mistakes in that role but did not return any of Marshall’s three kickoffs.

Williams “day-to-day”

Ohio State was without one of its top defensive players against Marshall as standout defensive tackle Tyleik Williams missed the contest with an undisclosed injury. Asked about Williams’ status postgame, Day did not specify the nature of Williams’ injury but said his status to return to action is “day-to-day.”

With Williams sidelined, Hero Kanu made his first career start in Williams’ place but did not record any tackle. Tywone Malone Jr. and Jason Moore also rotated in with the first-team defense at the 3-technique position where Williams typically starts. Malone had the most productive day of the trio, recording three total tackles – including a tackle for loss – as well as blowing up a 4th-and-1 run attempt for which he was not credited with a tackle because Marshall quarterback Stone Earle slipped and fell on his own with Malone in pursuit.

Day felt like the defensive tackle play in Williams’ absence was “a mixed bag.”

“I got to watch it and figure it out,” Day said. “Some good play in there, but there's some other things that I think we're going to look at and want to get fixed. So we’ll kind of wait till the film to get some more feedback from the defensive coaches on exactly how some of those should have been fitted.”

With Williams out of the lineup, Ohio State had its worst defensive performance of the season – relatively speaking – as the Buckeyes allowed their first two touchdowns of the year and gave up 264 total yards, just 12 less than Akron and Western Michigan combined for in Ohio State’s first two games. The Buckeyes recorded just one sack in Williams’ absence – which came from Caden Curry playing the 3-technique position in a third-down Rushmen package – but ultimately held the Thundering Herd to just 125 rushing yards on 43 attempts, an average of fewer than three yards per carry.

Siereveld rotates in at right guard

Ohio State left guard Donovan Jackson returned to action against Marshall after missing the first two games with an undisclosed injury of his own, but that didn’t eliminate Austin Siereveld from the Buckeyes’ offensive gameplan.

While Tegra Tshabola started at right guard for the third game in a row to begin the season, Siereveld mixed in with the first-team offense at RG on several possessions after Day said during the week that the Buckeyes would find opportunities for Siereveld to play. The Buckeyes’ starting left guard in place of Jackson in their first two games, Siereveld continued to perform well when called upon against Marshall, helping lead the way for a dominant running effort as Ohio State averaged nine yards per carry against the Thundering Herd.

Day said he doesn’t think it would be a bad thing for Tshabola and Siereveld to continue to split time but that the Buckeyes will continue to evaluate who should be the starting right guard and if it makes sense for them to keep rotating going forward.

“I like seeing them both play,” Day said. “I think they both deserve to play. I think you guys saw that both played well in the first couple games. We'll see how they graded out. We'll keep evaluating it. But I don't think it's a bad thing to have a young guy get a little bit of a break during a game. If we feel like it gets to the point where they're not getting in the flow of the game, then we'll keep a close eye on it, but I like getting those guys in the game and getting them reps.”

Day gets unsportsmanlike conduct penalty for play-clock dispute

Day has been seen talking to the officials more this season now that he is no longer Ohio State’s offensive play caller, but the third game of the year was the first time it reached the point that he actually got penalized for it.

With Ohio State facing 2nd-and-10 at Marshall’s 29-yard line midway through the third quarter, the Buckeyes were forced to call a timeout when the play clock ran out as officials held the snap to allow Marshall to substitute defensively. Day felt that a delay of game penalty should have been called against the defense due to how long the Thundering Herd took to get their players off the field, and he let the officials know about it. The officials responded by penalizing him for unsportsmanlike conduct.

“There was 21 seconds on the clock when we subbed in. They, in my opinion, were really, really, really, really slow getting in. And so at some point, when you make a sub around 21 seconds, you still should run a play,” Day said. “And so we had to call timeout, I went out to the numbers, I didn't curse, but I was raising my voice, saying that there was 21 seconds on the clock and at some point, that has to be a delay of game of the defense. I guess I yelled too loud, I'm not sure why, but that's what happened.”

Day continued to give the officials an earful throughout the ensuing media timeout, but there was no additional penalty assessed. That said, the 15-yard penalty led to Ohio State’s only punt while Will Howard and the first-team offense were still in the game.

Curry ejected for targeting

Another notable penalty against Ohio State in Saturday’s game came late in the second quarter when Caden Curry was ejected from the contest for a helmet-to-helmet hit against Earle.

It marked the second game in a row that an Ohio State player was ejected for targeting. Denzel Burke was ejected for targeting in the first quarter of Ohio State’s win over Western Michigan – a penalty that both Burke and Day disagreed with as Burke called the penalty a “bullcrap call” on Wednesday. Curry’s penalty, however, appeared to be a more textbook case of targeting as he leaped into Earle and hit the quarterback squarely in the facemask.

Day opted not to share an opinion on the penalty when asked about it after the game, saying he wanted to review the video first.

“I gotta look a little bit closer at it,” Day said. “When you see things in slow motion, sometimes it looks a little different than when it's live.”

Egbuka ends touchdown, 100-yard droughts

Emeka Egbuka scored his first touchdown of the season and had his first 100-yard game since 2022.

Coming off of a down year in 2023 in which he never topped 100 yards in a game and scored only four touchdowns – both in part due to a high-ankle sprain that sidelined him for part of the season and continued to plague him for the rest of the year afterward – Egbuka looked back to form in Ohio State’s first two games but did not score any touchdowns, though he arguably should have had one against Akron on a catch that was ruled to be incomplete even though he got a hand down in the end zone.

Egbuka needed only two plays from scrimmage to break through against Marshall, however, turning a screen pass into a 68-yard touchdown on the Buckeyes’ opening drive.

The senior receiver, who just missed the 100-yard plateau with 98 yards against Western Michigan, followed up that touchdown with four more receptions for 49 yards to finish the day with 117 receiving yards, the most he’s had in a game since 2022, when he topped 100 yards in six different contests. Egbuka never had more than 96 yards in a game in 2023.

Egbuka was happy to end both of those droughts against Marshall, though he said he was never worried about his statistics as long as he does his job to help Ohio State win.

“​​Obviously, it's fun to be able to perform at a very high level, but I never really try to hang my hat on the statistics,” Egbuka said. “If I had zero catches today but I still ran all the right routes and did all the right things, it doesn't make me any less of a player. I could have gone for 300 yards today, but that's just because the ball came my way. So I try to do what I can with the opportunities that I'm presented. If the ball comes my way, make the play, and if it doesn't, it's not really something I can control.

“At the end of the day, there's a responsibility deeper than just statistics. We're trying to make a legendary run this year, and you can't have that selfish mentality.”

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