Ohio State and Indiana was every bit the hotly contested matchup between two great teams that we expected coming into the weekend.
The Buckeyes escaped Bloomington with a 19-15 victory over the Hoosiers, backed mostly by the play of their defense and a huge lucky break at the end of the game. Ryan Day’s offense again struggled in the red zone, and they also suffered the loss of quarterback Julian Sayin to a shoulder injury, but Jeremiah Smith’s fourth quarter touchdown proved to be the difference
in a massive road win for Ohio State.
Here is the good, the bad, and the ugly from Ohio State’s victory over Indiana.
The Good
Jeremiah Smith
Jeremiah Smith didn’t even need to touch the football to make an impact against the Hoosiers, but when he did the star receiver really made it count.
Indiana did a great job of bracketing Smith for most of the day, slanting its defense towards him and trying to bait Julian Sayin into throwing into double and triple coverage, which they did on one of his interceptions.
However, when Ohio State needed him the most, Smith came down with a critical 38-yard touchdown on a 4th-and-1 deep ball, beating a pair of defenders for the jump ball in the end zone. That score would ultimately wind up being the difference in the game, giving the Buckeyes a 19-7 lead early in the fourth quarter.
Smith made his presence felt on Ohio State’s only other touchdown of the game as well.
The Buckeyes ran three consecutive plays inside the Indiana 2-yard line for no gain with Smith standing on the sideline. Ohio State finally put Smith back on the field on fourth down, and he drew four defenders to help give Bo Jackson a wide open touchdown out of the backfield.
Smith finished the game with four catches for 68 yards and the one touchdown, but his presence was felt on virtually every offensive snap. Ohio State should never take him off the field on critical downs ever again.
Defense (Ft. Jay Timmons and Jaylen McClain)
The overall numbers don’t jump off the page for this Ohio State defense, but it was another great day for Matt Patricia’s group.
The Buckeyes allowed 369 total yards against Indiana, but they held a good Hoosiers rushing attack to 73 yards on 2.5 yards per carry. They also forced a pair of turnovers, with Jay Timmons and Jaylen McClain each forcing a fumble, and stopped Indiana on both of their fourth down attempts.
McClain and Timmons were both incredible on Saturday, and are likely the two best players on the Ohio State roster behind Jeremiah Smith. McClain came up with a huge sack fumble on an Indiana fourth down try, while Timmons was making plays all over the field, officially credited with seven tackles, two pass breakups and the forced fumble.
The Hoosiers’ longest run of the day went for eight yards, and that was a scramble by Josh Hoover. The Buckeyes did get beat a handful of times through the air, but they were able to maintain their ‘bend don’t break’ style of defense, only allowing allowing one real touchdown drive after Indiana’s first score was set up by a short field coming off an interception.
The only real issue for the defense was the pass rush, as McClain’s big play was Ohio State’s only sack of the day. The Buckeyes also sat back and rushed only three or four throughout the fourth quarter, allowing Hoover to sit back in the pocket and carve them up.
Of Indiana’s 296 passing yards, 126 of them came in the final frame with Ohio State basically playing prevent. There is something to be said of them continuing to do that late in these close games, but they escaped this time.
Special Teams (!?)
Against all odds, Ohio State won the special teams battle against Indiana.
Connor Hawkins made both of his field goal attempts from 26 and 29 yards, while on the flip side Indiana kicker Nico Radicic — one of the best kickers in the country — missed both of his attempts, hitting the upright on a 32-yarder and coming up short on what would’ve been a career-long 55-yard attempt in the third quarter.
Ohio State also probably got their best career game from punter Joe McGuire, who pinned the Hoosiers inside the 20-yard line three times and also recored a 52-yard boot, with the help of a few good bounces. On the other side of the punting game, the Buckeyes got another nice return from Phillip Bell, this one for 14 yards.
We’ve talked so much about poor special teams play potentially costing Ohio State a game this season, but the unit did their jobs in this one, and they deserve credit.
Now let’s keep that up moving forward!
The Bad
Julian Sayin
I don’t want to pile on Sayin too hard, especially with the Ohio State quarterback leaving the game with an injury and returning to the sideline in a sling. However, almost all of the Buckeyes’ issues on offense throughout the first three quarters of action were almost exclusively Sayin’s fault.
Sayin began the game 4-of-4 for 68 yards, but pretty much fell apart from there. The next seven consecutive passes went incomplete, including an interception on a tipped ball attempting to hit a double-covered Jeremiah Smith, setting up an Indiana touchdown.
Sayin was clearly rattled the entire game. The Hoosiers were definitely getting pressure against the Buckeyes’ beat up offensive line, but it wasn’t anything that seemed to be super overbearing, and on top of that Ohio State’s receivers were getting consistently open.
We haven’t really seen Sayin throwing inaccurate balls and missing wide receivers in his time in Columbus, but Saturday was an ugly performance. His second interception was perhaps his worst throw ever in a Scarlet and Grey uniform, overthrowing a wide open Smith on a play that likely would have been a touchdown, but instead went right into the arms of the safety playing over the top.
Ryan Day announced after the game that Sayin will be out for “several weeks,” and so Ohio State now must put together a game plan over the off week for Luke Fahey or Tavien St. Clair to lead this offense against some tough opponents coming up.
Red Zone Offense
Parts of this game felt very much like a lot of previous losses in big games for Ohio State, most of which revolved around failures in the red zone.
The Buckeyes scored only one touchdown in three tips to the red zone, and it took them four tries from inside Indiana’s 2-yard line to even get that score. Ohio State had gone away from the 13 personnel looks for most of this season, but the ineffective formation returned with a vengeance against the Hoosiers, and it remained woefully ineffective.
On Ohio State’s opening drive, the Buckeyes were faced with a 3rd-and-4 at the Indiana 8-yard line, and they choose to line up three tight ends OUT WIDE with Smith in the slot. Naturally, the Hoosiers locked in on Smith and won all of their one-on-one matchups with the tight ends, and Ohio State had to kick a field goal.
It is maddening that Ryan Day’s teams continue to load up on tight ends down near the goal line despite multiple different offensive coordinators. It’s clear it is a decision that is coming from the top, but it makes no sense for Ohio State to keep featuring perhaps the worst position group on the roster on some of the most important plays of the game — especially at the expense of taking Jeremiah Smith off the field.
The Buckeyes luckily made both short field goals this time, but they keep shooting themselves in the foot and limiting their own offense for no good reason. Keenan Bailey isn’t good at his job and they need to stop pretending his position group gives them any chance to score.
The Ugly
Cam Calhoun
Flat out: Cam Calhoun shouldn’t play another snap this season for Ohio State.
First and foremost, he should have never been allowed to join the Buckeyes’ roster in the first place. Calhoun, famously, committed to Michigan while on a visit to Columbus for The Game in 2022, immediately after Ohio State’s 45-23 loss to the Wolverines.
That alone should be disqualifying, but somehow his play in his first season at Ohio State after stops at Michigan, Utah and Alabama — none of which were successful — has been even more offensive.
Part of it falls on the Ohio State coaching staff. The Buckeyes matched Calhoun up 1-on-1 with Nick Marsh on a critical 3rd-and-8 early in the third quarter. The corner was then immediately toasted for a 19-yard touchdown, showcasing absolutely zero ability to play in coverage against the talented receiver.
How did Ohio State’s coaches respond? They lined him up 1-on-1 AGAIN against Marsh on Indiana’s final offensive play of the game, where he was again completely burned by and would have allowed the game-losing touchdown had Marsh’s foot not barely came down out of bounds.
Calhoun finished as the Buckeyes’ lowest-rated player in the game, with PFF grading him out at 40.3. The transfer played only 18 snaps, but it was 18 snaps too many.
Injuries (?)
The injuries are really piling up for Ohio State, with the most obvious being the loss of Julian Sayin.
The Buckeyes lost their starting quarterback for at least the next few weeks, but they also seemed to be without another handful of key players down the stretch against Indiana.
Kenyatta Jackson Jr. left the game early in the fourth quarter with an injury, going to the ground holding his knee. It looked bad in real time, and Jackson was aided to the medical tent by the Ohio State staff. Jackson did return to the game briefly after, but after the game was helped off the field by Eddrick Houston.
It didn’t look like Timmons was on the field on that final series for Indiana, which is a large reason why Calhoun was in the game in the first place. It’s hard to believe that would be a coaching decision, especially after Timmons had missed the last few games with an injury.
Bo Jackson was also notably absent on Ohio State’s final offensive series, with the Buckeyes turning to Isaiah West and Legend Bey while trying to close out the game. Again, it would be odd if it were a coaching decision to not use your top back in an attempt to run out the clock with the game on the line.
Naturally, nobody on the Ohio State beat asked Day about any of these injuries to three key players, so we likely won’t know the full extent until later in the week, but missing any of those guys would be a significant loss in addition to already losing your quarterback.
Referees
I’m very rarely someone to get on the refs, as I have grown accustomed to Ohio State not really getting a friendly whistle. When you have more talent than 95% of the teams you play against, the stripes aren’t going to do you any favors, even if it looks like you deserved the call.
That being said, the refereeing against the Buckeyes on Saturday was some of the most egregious I have seen in quite some time.
The most obvious bad call of the day was the roughing the passer penalty on Jermaine Mathews late in the fourth quarter. A play that would have set up a 3rd-and-15 for Indiana, Mathews did not hit the quarterback late, nor did he fall on top of him or launch himself at him, but was still incorrectly flagged to give the Hoosiers a free first down at Ohio State’s 33-yard line.
Jeremiah Smith was also being reffed like prime Shaq out there. The Ohio State receiver doesn’t need any help, but on several occasions Smith was being tackled or held by his defender while the ball was in the air, most notably on an early deep ball attempt. Everyone understands how good he is, but that doesn’t mean you can do whatever you want to him as a defender with no repercussions.
That was in addition to the plethora of obvious holds against Indiana that went uncalled, including one on that final pass to Marsh. Ohio State was also incorrectly flagged on a chunk run by Bo Jackson earlier in the game, which ultimately killed that drive.
The Buckeyes had to overcome a good Indiana team plus several injuries and awful officiating, but they somehow got the job done nonetheless.
