Skull Session: Fight, Flight or Freeze

Welcome to the Skull Session.

Question of the week, month, year:

What happened? pic.twitter.com/gd4JYB75W7
— Nicole Auerbach (@NicoleAuerbach) November 30, 2024

Word of the week, month, year:

A PICTURE IS WORTH 1,000 WORDS.

PAIN. THERE WAS PAIN EVERYWHERE. I cannot believe it. I cannot explain it. I cannot stand it.

After all of its offseason momentum – the seniors coming back, the transfers coming in and the coaching staff overhaul – this Ohio State team lost to that Michigan team.

That Michigan team is one of the worst I’ve seen in 25 years.

The Wolverines were one-dimensional on offense all season. Their quarterbacks couldn’t complete a forward pass. After experiments with Alex Orji and Jack Tuttle, Michigan head coach Sherrone Moore settled on Davis Warren to lead his offense. Warren had completed 64.1 percent of his passes for 1,064 yards, six touchdowns and seven interceptions before this past weekend.

With those numbers and without his best weapon, Colston Loveland, Warren completed 56.3 percent of his passes for 62 yards and two picks against Ohio State.

But that’s all the production Warren needed to win The Game.

There are several reasons for that.

In front of 106,005 people inside the Horseshoe, Ohio State’s offense had its worst performance of the season. For some reason – even with first-round cornerback Will Johnson sidelined – Ryan Day and Chip Kelly insisted on running the ball between the tackles time after time after time. According to Pro Football Focus, the Buckeyes called 14 runs into the rear of its weakest links on the offensive line and into the teeth of two first-round defensive tackles, Mason Graham and Kenneth Grant. Overall, Ohio State ran the ball 26 times for 77 yards – numbers that include 15-yard and 17-yard runs from Quinshon Judkins, meaning its other 24 attempts went for 45 yards (1.87 YPC).

Will Howard entered The Game as a Heisman contender. Those hopes ended in three-and-a-half hours as he tossed two awful interceptions, one that led to Michigan’s lone touchdown and another in the red zone when the teams were tied in the second half. Despite second-half interceptions from Caleb Downs and Jack Sawyer, Howard and the Buckeyes didn’t score in the final 30 minutes. They didn’t have a first down in the final 21.

Ohio State’s special teams also made me nauseous. Jayden Fielding missed field goals from 34 and 38 yards, while Dominic Zvada made attempts from 54 and 21. Joe McGuire averaged 36 yards on his punts, while Tommy Doman averaged 47.3, an inflated number thanks to a punt that Downs let sail over his head to become a 68-yarder that flipped the field. Then there was TreVeyon Henderson’s kickoff return out of halftime — if I can call it a “return” – which the senior captain allowed to bounce before he fell on the football at the 6-yard line.

It’s hard to put much blame on Ohio State’s defense for the loss. The Silver Bullets did their part to the end – figuratively and literally. Their two mishaps came on Michigan's final drive as Ohio State seemed to swarm Kalel Mullings for a loss on 3rd-and-6; however, the power back broke free for a 27-yard gain that proved to be a backbreaker for the Buckeyes. Later on that drive, Ohio State received an illegal substitution penalty for having 12 men on the field, which gave the Wolverines a first down and allowed them to bleed the clock down to 45 seconds before Zvada’s game-winning field goal.

How did this Ohio State team lose to that Michigan team?

I cannot believe it.

I cannot explain it.

I cannot stand it.

FIGHT. FLIGHT. FREEZE. Ohio State’s motto is Fight, but with the Buckeyes back against the wall in The Game, all Ryan Day did was freeze, looking like a coach out of answers for how to beat his team’s greatest rival.

His comparisons to John Cooper are obvious.

I’ve watched reruns of The Game in the 1990s. Most of the time, Ohio State was more talented than Michigan. But most of the time, Michigan won. As the Wolverines bullied the Buckeyes, the broadcast would cut to Cooper. The head coach looked dissociated – his body roaming the sidelines but his mind a million miles away. He was frozen.

Day had the same look on Saturday.

Like Cooper, Day has a Michigan problem.

After a win over the Wolverines in his debut season, Day has lost four consecutive matchups. As he said in his postgame press conference, each of those losses came in different forms and fashions, but “the results are the results,” and those results point to Day’s poor temperament being a common denominator in the Buckeyes’ recent shortcomings in The Game.

A passionate Jack Sawyer after Michigan players attempted to plant their flag on the Block O. pic.twitter.com/t5XKLY0NeI
— 97.1 The Fan (@971thefan) November 30, 2024

When a team wearing maize and blue stands across from him, Day hasn’t coached to win; he’s coached not to lose. That fear trickles down to his players, creating a team afraid to handle the moment. It also trickles down to the fans. I was in Ohio Stadium for The Game. When the ball was live, there were screams so loud it pierced the thick glass in the press box. When it wasn’t, I could have cut the tension with a knife.

The last time the teams met in Columbus, that tension made sense (I think the same applies to the matchups in 2021 and 2023, but those were in Ann Arbor). Both teams were good. Michigan was good. But this Wolverines team was far from it. They were 6-5, barely bowl-eligible, and were without two of their best players – three if you include Donovan Edwards, who left the game before halftime with an injury. That tension should have never existed. This Michigan team was the worst Ohio State has lost to in Day’s tenure. Not just the worst Michigan team, but the worst team, period.

Some Ohio State fans want Day canned now; others want to see what he can accomplish in the College Football Playoff. Regardless, his seat is warm. It’s possible that nothing less than a CFP title will please Buckeye Nation.

I find that ironic.

In August, it was national championship or bust for the Buckeyes. Three months later, it’s still national championship or bust, but for a completely different reason: It could determine Day’s future at Ohio State. Could he leave Columbus as the second coming of Cooper, a great recruiter and developer of talent who couldn’t win The Game, or could he return as the second coming of Kirby Smart, a national champion head coach whose rival is his boogeyman?

PLAYOFF BOUND. Ohio State is a lock to make the College Football Playoff. That ranked low in the team's mind on Saturday.

How low?

“Very low,” Howard said.

Sooner or later, the rank will have to increase. The sun came up Sunday, and the Buckeyes did, too. That means it's time to get back to the Woody and get back to work. Howard said Ohio State's coaches and players understand that.

"We lost. It hurts. I can't say it enough. I'm sorry to Buckeye Nation," he said. "But listen, we still got things ahead of us. We can still run the table and win a national championship. That's what we have to focus on. That has to keep us going because this one hurts like hell. I just feel for those guys that came back. I feel for Coach Day and everything they poured into this. At the end of the day, we still have stuff in front of us. We'll regroup and go from there."

Ohio State ranked No. 7 and No. 8 in the AP and Coaches polls after its loss to Michigan. Factoring in conference champion byes, the Buckeyes would be the No. 9 seed in the CFP based on those positions and travel to Tennessee in the first round.

SONG OF THE DAY. "Hurt" - Johnny Cash (Nine Inch Nails Cover).