For one quarter, it looked like Ohio State had found its answer. The Buckeyes led 14-0 after the first quarter on Saturday and had outgained Oregon 174-61. Luke Fahey looked comfortable, Bo Jackson had two touchdowns, and the Ohio Stadium crowd was rocking. It looked like the response everyone had been waiting for after USC. Then Oregon scored 38 straight points.
The Ducks won 41-28, handing Ohio State back-to-back losses for the first time since 2011 and guaranteeing the Buckeyes their first three-game
regular-season losing streak in 15 years. There were plenty of problems, but for me, this game was decided by the big plays Ohio State’s defense couldn’t stop. Every time the Buckeyes had Oregon backed into a corner, they found a way out, and Ohio State’s defense vs. Oregon’s big plays decided this one.
The second quarter swing
Ohio State’s defense had control of the game early. Oregon managed just 61 yards in the first quarter, and Dylan Raiola didn’t look anything like the quarterback who threw for 336 yards against Northwestern. Then the second quarter happened. Oregon converted two third downs of 10 yards or longer. On one of them, a third-and-15, Raiola found Dierre Hill Jr. out of the backfield for a 20-yard gain down to the Ohio State 9. Hill scored on the next play to cut the lead to 14-10 with 1:25 left in the half.
That drive only existed because of an earlier mistake. Jaylen McClain dropped what would have been an interception. A few plays later, Oregon faced fourth-and-9 near midfield and lined up to punt. Instead, linebacker Teitum Tuioti took the snap and threw to fellow linebacker Matayo Uiagalelei for a 30-yard gain. Two pass rushers combined on a fake punt, and Ohio State was nowhere near it.
Dan Lanning said afterward that the fake punt “created some momentum,” and that’s an understatement. On Ohio State’s next possession, Fahey threw an interception, and Oregon turned it into another touchdown before halftime. A 14-3 Ohio State lead became a 17-14 Oregon deficit in a span of a few minutes. That’s the whole game in one sequence. Ohio State had Oregon in third-and-long and fourth-and-long, the exact spots this defense wants, and gave up the big play every time.
The missed tackles came back
The second half started even worse. On Oregon’s opening drive, Hill cut right, broke three tackles and went 48 yards for a touchdown to make it 24-14. It was the third play of 40-plus yards Ohio State had allowed in two games, after allowing none longer than 36 yards before USC.
It’s the same problem I wrote about last week. Against USC, Trent Mosley’s 69-yard screen and Mark Bowman’s 70-yard catch-and-run came from missed tackles and bad angles. Against Oregon, it was Hill running through arm tackles. He finished with 75 yards and two touchdowns on 13 carries, and much of that came after first contact.
Raiola wasn’t spectacular, but he didn’t need to be. He went 25-of-40 for 257 yards and two touchdowns, and the Ohio State pass rush never consistently made him uncomfortable. In my article on Raiola this week, I wrote that the blueprint was to pressure him, take away the big plays, and wait for mistakes. After the first quarter, Ohio State did none of those things.
The offense couldn’t help either
The defense wasn’t the only problem on Saturday, though. Ohio State ran for just 53 yards, and once Oregon took the lead, Fahey had to throw 50 times. His final line of 36 of 50 for 360 yards and two touchdowns looks decent, but 178 of those yards and both touchdowns came in the fourth quarter after the game was decided.
Jeremiah Smith finished with seven catches for 133 yards and a late touchdown, but he was quiet for most of the middle of the game and visibly frustrated on the sideline at the start of the fourth quarter. His 133 yards put him at 3,758 for his career, 30 short of tying John Standeford’s Big Ten record and 31 from breaking it, so that milestone will have to wait for Northwestern.
What’s next
The frustrating part is that Ohio State was the better team for the first 15 minutes. They had the lead, the momentum, and Oregon backed into difficult situations. But for the second straight week, the defense, the unit that was supposed to carry this team through Sayin’s injury, couldn’t make the plays that mattered.
A dropped interception, a fake punt, long third-down conversions, and a 48-yard run through missed tackles. None of them alone loses a game. But together, they turned a 14-0 lead into a 41-28 loss.
At 6-3 and 4-2 in the Big Ten, Ohio State’s playoff hopes now hang on by a thread, if at all. Northwestern comes to Columbus next week, followed by a trip to Nebraska and a home matchup with Michigan. If this defense doesn’t start taking away the big plays, Ohio State’s season could slip away a lot sooner than anyone expected.
