Skull Session: Will Howard Understands What The Game Means to Ohio State and Its Fans, Ryan Day and the Buckeyes Put an “Exclamation Point” on Indiana Win With a Late Touchdown

By Chase Brown on November 25, 2024 at 5:00 am
Will Howard
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Welcome to the Skull Session.

Ohio State's Indiana Recap featured a Google dig, videos of Desmond Howard, Pat McAfee and Lee Corso picking the Hoosiers to beat the Buckeyes and more. I had fun watching it. I think you will, too.

Have a good Monday.

 HE GETS IT. As Ohio State quarterbacks, I loved C.J. Stroud and liked Kyle McCord.

However, for one reason or another, neither quarterback chose the correct words to describe The Game. Looking back on their comments now, it seems Stroud and McCord knew about The Game, but neither fully understood what it means to Ohio State fans.

“I don’t think one game defines us. I don’t think one game defines this team. I would take this team against anybody in the country every week,” Stroud said after Ohio State's second straight loss to Michigan in 2022.

“The implications are huge. But at the end of the day, it’s just a football game. I’m just doing everything I can to help my team win. I think there’s a lot of noise around it. I think there’s a lot of hype around it – and rightfully so. But I think the biggest thing is focusing on what’s important, and that’s watching film and doing the small things during the week that’ll give you the best chance to succeed,” McCord said before the Buckeyes’ third straight loss to the Wolverines in 2023.

Coming off a top-five win over Indiana, Will Howard could have created calamitous quotes like his predecessors. Instead, the Pennsylvania native who spent the past four years in Kansas knew the exact ethos, logos and pathos to communicate that, in fact, one game does define Ohio State, and that game is not just a game at all.

“I can’t wait. I’m stoked. I’m fired up. It’s the first thing I heard when I came on my visit: Beat ‘The Team Up North.’ It’s the first goal we have every single year: Beat ‘The Team Up North,’ Howard said Saturday. “I want to do this for Coach (Ryan) Day. I want to do this for the guys that came back, for Emeka (Egbuka), Trey (Henderson), JT (Tuimoloau), Jack (Sawyer), Tyleik (Williams), Ty (Hamilton) – I could go on. But I want this for them so bad.

“They’ve been here. I’ve seen it from a distance. I feel it, and I’m a part of it now, and I want this for me, too, but I want it for those guys. I want it for Coach Day, you know, to shut up the haters and be able to go out there and say, ‘This is The Ohio State Buckeyes.’ This rivalry game means everything. We talk about it all the time. It’s all over the place in our building. I’m honored to be a part of it. I won’t take it lightly. This is the biggest game of our season. I’m looking forward to it.”

Notice a difference?

I certainly do.

Where Stroud and McCord sinned (the archery term, not the biblical term, though I understand some believe the latter to be true in this instance as well), Howard hit a bullseye. The Game in 2024 is about revenge – more than that, a reckoning – for the past three years when Ohio State’s players, coaches and fans suffered greatly due to the red hands of their maize and blue rivals. Howard gets it. I expect to see him deliver this weekend in Columbus.

 RUN IT UP, HERMAN! All week, Day seemed disinterested in Curt Cignetti’s self-promotion, and more than that, he seemed offended that the national media believed Indiana could beat Ohio State in Columbus. That manifested itself in a mic-drop comment on the Pat McAfee Show and a call to arms at the Skull Session. It also manifested itself in the Buckeyes scoring a touchdown with 35 seconds left to make the final score 38-15.

“We were on the 1-yard line. We felt like we wanted to put an exclamation point on the win,” Day said.

Howard echoed that sentiment.

“We wanted to put an exclamation point on that thing and kind of remind them what the Buckeyes are,” Howard said. “You accept what you ask for. I think I have a ton of respect for (Indiana). That was not in any way disrespectful. We were just trying to put an exclamation point on the game. We were on the 1-yard line, so let’s go score.”

Cignetti took no offense to the touchdown – at least not publicly. Indiana reporters, on the other hand…

Indiana hit a nerve with the big, bad Buckeyes? It's more like the big, bad Buckeyes struck a nerve with you, Champ. These reporters cannot claim Ohio State ran up the score when Cignetti elected for a two-point conversion and onside kick attempts after Indiana’s late touchdown. The Hoosiers didn’t quit. Neither did the Buckeyes. That’s all there was to it.

 GOODBYE, 10-YEAR DROUGHT. There was pandemonium in the press box as Caleb Downs fielded an Indiana punt off the bounce, pressed the Braxton Miller B-button to evade a Hoosiers defender and followed a trail of excellent lead blocks and score Ohio State’s first punt return touchdown since 2014. 

I can’t remember all the details of how I reacted. However, I believe I looked like that one video of Joe Rogan as I leaned back and reached for Dan Hope and Andy Anders.

After Downs reached the end zone, Hope, Anders and I scrambled to create as much #content on the punt return touchdown as possible. There were articles, memes and social media videos – heck, we even posted a banner on the website. That’s how monumental the moment was for the Buckeyes.

“There was no doubt I was gonna field it,” Downs said. “There was space there, and everybody did a really good job blocking on the punt return unit. We talked about it all week that we had a real opportunity to do it this week.”

Caden Curry, one of Ohio State’s standouts on special teams all season but in particular the past three games against Purdue, Northwestern and Indiana, said he wasn’t surprised to see Downs make a house call on Saturday.

“We knew it was coming soon,” Curry said. “We practiced it for so long. We knew it was coming. Having Caleb back there, all he had to do was break a couple (of tackles). We knew he could do that.”

Day said earlier this month that Ohio State had poured too much time into special teams for it not to be a “plus” for the Buckeyes. With two punt blocks, Indiana’s trouble with the snap and Downs’ punt return touchdown, it’s become that and more. That ought to make Jim Tressel proud!

 IT JUST MEANS MORE. It’s hard to win college football games. It’s even harder to win them in November. On Saturday, Oklahoma beat then-No. 7 Alabama, 24-3; Florida beat then-No. 9 Ole Miss, 24-17; and Auburn beat No. 15 Texas A&M, 43-41 in four overtimes. 

While I find the incredible doses of copium SEC fans and media are consuming hilarious, I won’t discuss it here. Instead, I want to make this note: There are some fair and unfair criticisms of Day out there, but no one – and I mean not even his most serious detractors (of which there should be few) – can criticize him for losing to bad teams.

In almost six full seasons as Ohio State’s head coach, Day has a winning percentage of .880 (66-9). That is the best winning percentage among active head coaches, with the next-best being Georgia’s Kirby Smart’s .851 (103-18). Day is 46-0 against unranked teams and 20-9 against ranked teams during his tenure. He may have losses to national-championship-winning teams like Alabama, Georgia and Michigan, but he doesn’t have losses to barely bowl-eligible teams like Oklahoma, Florida and Auburn. I think that deserves some credit! Certainly more credit than he often gets.

Oh, and while I’m here, Day has two top-five wins since people told me he couldn’t win top-five matchups after the Oregon game. As Cignetti said before the game on Saturday, people can stick that narrative up their you know what.

 SONG OF THE DAY. "Carmen Ohio" - TBDBITL.

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