Ohio State suffered its first shutout on Saturday.
The Buckeyes scored zero points in the 2nd quarter against Iowa, marking the first frame all season the top of the depth chart went 15 whole minutes without putting one in the end zone or through the uprights.
Until the 1st quarter in East Lansing ended 3-0 in favor of the visitors, Ohio State had scored at least seven in every quarter regardless of personnel. No points were exchanged in the final quarter, when both teams were just trying to get off Peacock and back home. That was the first goose egg all year.
The second was laid Saturday when Iowa sent the home team into the half with only a 7-0 lead on national television. What was truly alarming - the Buckeyes had more trouble holding onto the ball than moving it.
Jeremiah Smith fumbled what would have been a chunk play, and whatever you want to call Donovan Jackson floundering to recover it might actually count as a second fumble (big fellas on offense, you have clubs for hands - just knock any loose balls you see out of bounds).
Will Howard was Bad Will for a play and telegraphed another pick while Chip Kelly dialed up a 4th & 1 decision which brought back early 2023 PTSD. A healthy fan base might have interpreted that call as deliberate, emotional seasoning to prepare for the stiffer challenges ahead. But healthy is not who we are, baby.
Team Natty-or-Bust was only up seven at halftime. Cue the relevant meme:
Ohio State fans when they only win a game by 63 points
— Gary Treeman (@PurpyNFL) September 21, 2024
pic.twitter.com/7tgU6f5JZG
Only 7-0 at halftime? Against an unranked team? What are we, feudal peasants?
Well, Iowa had the best defense Ohio State will face this regular season. SP+ had it rankled no.2 in the country, and since the Buckeyes only get to face themselves at the Woody on weekdays that's the stiffest thing they'll face through November.
The Silver Bullets (you should click on that and grab your credit card) got handsy after halftime, and while Iowa turned none of the Buckeyes' 1st half gifts into points of any kind, the home team took the Hawkeyes' turnovers and cashed them in for 21. As J. Robert Oppenheimer famously said to Gen. Leslie Groves over gin martinis and amphetamines: Game over, man.
Iowa hadn't previously allowed more than 21 points in a whole-ass game this season - the Buckeyes put that many up in less than 10 minutes. No opponent had scored more on the Hawkeyes going back to 2022 when Ohio State last hosted them.
They hadn't given up 21 in a frame since the 4th quarter against Michigan in 2021. You may be curious about the last time the Hawkeyes gave up three touchdowns in a single quarter in a game that has no possible chance of ever being vacated or heavily asterisked - and that would be the 2016 Rose Bowl against Stanford.
Nine seasons. Pretty good! One bird down, one to go. Oregon's up, let's get Situational.
OPENER | THE CHAOTIC LIVES OF CONTROL FREAKS
Oct 5, 2024; Columbus, OH, USA; Ohio State Buckeyes safety Sonny Styles (6) tackles Iowa Hawkeyes running back Kaleb Johnson (2) in the back field in the third quarter during the NCAA football game at Ohio Stadium. © Kyle Robertson/Columbus Dispatch / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images
Ryan Day and Dan Lanning are two coaches with gaudy records who aren't known for their success in rivalry games. You know about Day; Lanning still hasn't beaten Washington in three tries.
They're both long-runway coaches who studied under legends (Urban Meyer, Chip Kelly, Nick Saban, Kirby Smart) and are still both young enough to be figuring out who they are versus aping the guys they learned from - Day is currently at the age Saban was during in his second season in East Lansing.
But this isn't a sport where you can have the biggest desk in Columbus or at Phil Knight's personal Saturday fetish and be awarded with patience or growing pains. At this point in their respective careers, neither has a reputation of rising to meet the biggest moments they've earned their way into.
And this weekend one of them will continue to lose this type of game. Lanning's biggest win to date was against Kelly's no.9 and defense-less UCLA Bruins two seasons ago while Day has eight top-10 wins to his credit. That sounds impressive, right?
Outside of Clemson in the 2020 CFP semifinal, you're lucky to name four of them without looking it up. The ones you remember are the ones we remember. That's how he got here.
THE BUCKEYES HAVE now strung together two consecutive games where they've had the superior offense, defense *and* special teams.
The first five games of the Buckeyes' season have played out pretty much as expected; only brief flirtations with anything resembling a competitive outing. Akron led Ohio State 3-0 to start the season and the Buckeyes haven't trailed a single minute ever since.
Oregon likely dialed it down and ran conventional game plans against its early-season punching bags - we all know how that song goes - but the Ducks appear to do what they want to do whenever they choose to do it. They have undeniable talent and no one is going to have to beg the Buckeyes to take this trip seriously.
Speaking of the Buckeyes, they've now strung together two consecutive games where they've had the superior offense, defense and special teams against B1G opponents. Kirk Ferentz nearly executed a successful fake punt before faking himself out and freezing his own unit.
If the Buckeyes can win a third straight game on the margins and merely perform at an acceptable standard otherwise, this will be an incredibly hard game for the home team to win. I still cannot make sense of OSU's defensive line substitution packages and have Healthy Ohio State Fan Anxiety over how little Jordan Hancock has played (37 snaps in two games, he's rested and...rusty?)
But thus far there's been no reason to suspect an abrupt puckering, downshift or puzzling self-inflicted setback; certainly a perk of having so many adults on the roster. This team operates like it assumes the weather will be too hot. Or too cold. Too windy. Abnormally placid. The refs are going to stink one-sidedly.
Some things will go wrong. Most things will go wrong. This team has been operating as though it has the gumption and ability to win by 21 when all of those variable crash down at the same time. And that's because it believes that it does.
INTERMISSION
The Solo
The last time we had to tolerate the unforgivable phrase Defending National Champion Michigan Wolverines it was following the 1997 season. This year, intermissions will pay homage to that cursed year's Billboard Hot 100.
If you didn't see Return of the Quack coming this week back in August then I have to assume you're one of the readers who skips straight to the bourbon section, which - hey, good for you. Me too.
Mark Morrison was born in Hanover, then-West Germany. If you are unfamiliar with any of his other hit songs that means you're regulated to international pop music one-hit wonders. Morrison went triple-platinum with Mack and whiffed every other time at the plate.
The song includes a spoken interlude, for which German has a dedicated word - sprechgesang. Let's answer our two questions.
Is the musician in the video actually performing this sprechgesang?
That's veteran backup singer and songwriter Angie Brown, who does not appear in the video in the role of Cheating-Ass Girlfriend. The actress tapped to lip sync Brown's sprechgesang was Suzannah Grippa, whom you might remember in the role of Loyal Girlfriend in the short film How to Breed Gibbons. Look it up.
She's versatile! But alas, not actually sprechgesanging. VERDICT: No, conclusive.
does this sprechgensang slap?
I've got 3,000 words on Boyz II Men you'll never get to read because I probably won't write them, but the gist is the notorious mid-song spoken-word device they used to chop every single one of their ballads in half effectively straddled a very narrow line separating heartbreak from hilarity.
Morrison aping it with Cheating-Ass Girlfriend is an elegant homage with an elevated degree of difficulty. This is no ballad. It's a clap-back at his Cheating-Ass Girlfriend. You know what rhymes with claps? VERDICT: Ohrfeigen
The Bourbon
There is a bourbon for every situation. Sometimes the spirits and the events overlap, which means that where bourbon is concerned there can be more than one worthy choice.
Oregon Spirit. Meant to be broken.
It's difficult to say with a straight face that No.2 vs. No.3 matchups are hard to come by in college football because Saturday is the third straight year Ohio State has participated in one of them.
The last time the Buckeyes actually won one of these was New Year's Day, 2021 - Dabo Swinney was involved. So No.2 vs. No.3 is rare and simultaneously not terribly difficult to find? And Oregon is involved this time? Yes, there's a bourbon for that.
Oregon Spirit has been around for awhile but you'll have to join a bourbon club to get your hands on their hand-filled, hand-labeled Cask Strength product because it's not available untethered.
Ducks vs. Bucks represents what ball-knowers refer to as a talent-equated game and like both teams, OSCS has talent everywhere - it is a four-grainer (Corn 66%, rye 18%, wheat and malt 8%) distilled with high desert aquifer-sourced water. Unlike Lanning's roster, it's almost entirely put together from in-state components.
We've got a high-octane north of 118-proof bomb here, so I added a teaspoon of distilled water to try and taste more of this beast. Nose - a vanilla yogurt-dipped plum, if such a thing were to ever exist. Palate - like a square of dark chocolate you picked out of an ashtray. Finish - toffee and the wet hickory wood ships I smoke pork butts in.
Overall, quite decent. The accessible, untethered stuff is probably worth a try - don't join a club just to get a bottle of fancy gasoline. And don't pay over $50, available online.
CLOSER | THE END OF POVERTY
Oct 5, 2024; Columbus, OH, USA; Ohio State Buckeyes wide receiver Jeremiah Smith (4) gets past Iowa Hawkeyes defensive back Koen Entringer (4) after a catch in the third quarter during the NCAA football game at Ohio Stadium. © Kyle Robertson/Columbus Dispatch / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images
If you're a consumer of college football takes outside of the 11W bubblesphere you may have been exposed to lazy conclusions about the acquisition and retention costs related to the 2024 Ohio State football roster.
The Buckeyes brought in fewer scholarship transfers (7) than they lost (26) but that detail gets lost in the intent, which is diminishing the program for having desperately shopped for talent. Day landed three of the top nine free agents - Caleb Downs, Julian Sayin and Quinshon Judkins.
But his top-performing acquisition thus far has been Seth McLaughlin, who wasn't ranked in the top 100 - thank you, Coach Nick. Downs, Judkins and Ohio State's best center since Billy Price have been true difference makers - but the majority of their imports have been depth pieces.
That is not what buying a championship looks like - there are better examples of that, and it requires far more than just a bag of money. Retention was the strongest undercurrent in elevating what the Buckeyes put on the field last year versus this year.
Chip Kelly taking an emeritus role and full-timing his talent into play calling and orchestration has been another difference-maker. Will Howard (no.41 in free agency targets) is field temperature upgrade above anything else Kyle McCord brought to an overburdened and clunky offense which barely ranked in the top 50 last season following a decade as a top 10 fixture.
Compensating athletes with free tuition has always been like paying restaurant staff exclusively in food. It never made any sense, nor was it fair.
But what we've seen out of the program through five games reflects the classic, corporate adage compensation shapes behavior. Judkins on an income and workplace environment raise is tracking toward 190 carries in a 16-game Ohio State season. He had 271 last year in Oxford and 274 as a freshman.
It's a load management team-first all-in scenario and the Buckeyes are maximizing his efficiency as part of a tandem without having to manage any residual poutiness which traditionally comes from amateurs on a ticking clock desperately trying to nail an NFL interview through an unpaid, televised internship.
It sure doesn't feel like an all-star team, which generally come with spotlight competitions and manufactured interest in advancing the group's goals over personal ones. Early October is premature for having this discussion, but Bucks and Ducks colliding with each other and NFL talent everywhere demands the question - can the same programs pull off a combination of retention and free agency every year?
Is this sustainable? The environment didn't exist a decade ago in the twilight of an era where universities were still retaining revenue-generating student athletes with tuition and cost of attendance. Compensating revenue sports athletes with free school has always been like paying restaurant staff exclusively in food. It never made any sense.
The moment these sports began funding gaudy capital projects and near-seven figure salaries for mediocre administrators it all had to change above the table. And it finally did, but the programs which can successfully address the sustainability question will make this all look unfair. One-hit wonders feel good in the moment. That's not what Ohio State or Oregon are intending to accomplish.
When the newness of this era shakes out, the losers will go all in on blaming or crediting the money they didn't have. That's silly. You don't win with money. You win with people.
Thanks for getting Situational today. Go Bucks. Beat Oregon.
