No. 1 Ohio State went into Champaign with a ‘just win’ mentality and was able to accomplish that goal, defeating No. 17 Illinois 34-16. It wasn’t the most aesthetically pleasing win in the world, but the Buckeyes
were once again dominant on defense and good enough on offense to beat a highly ranked team by three scores on the road.
Here is the Good, the Bad and the Ugly from the Buckeyes’ latest victory…
The Good
Takeaways
Ohio State’s defense has been nothing short of elite this season. If you wanted to nitpick, the one area you could say they’ve lacked is in the turnover department. The Buckeyes haven’t really needed it, but came into Saturday tied for 89th in the country with only five total takeaways through their first five games.
That changed against Illinois, with the Silver Bullets forcing three turnovers on a pair of fumbles and an interception. They weren’t cheap, turnover-luck plays either. All three were a result of fantastic plays made by the defense.
Ohio State’s first takeaway came on Illinois’ very first drive of the game.
Luke Altmeyer, who had not yet thrown an interception this season, tried to hit Hank Beatty over the middle of the field, but the pass was broken up by Jermaine Mathews Jr. and popped into the air. From there it fell into the waiting arms of Payton Pierce, who returned it 15 yards to set the Buckeyes up with excellent field position.
Both fumbles came on tremendous individual efforts as well.
Kayden McDonald completely overpowered Illini running back Ca’Lil Valentine on a run up the middle, ripping the ball out of his hands and taking over possession by himself midway through the second quarter. The other fumble, which came in the third quarter, was a strip sack by Mathews, coming off the edge on a blitz and knocking the ball away from an unsuspecting Altmeyer.
The best part for Ohio State is that all three takeaways led to touchdowns.
Winning
The Buckeyes certainly didn’t play their best football game against Illinois, but still managed to come away with a three-score victory over the No. 17 team in the country on the road. If that is what you get from a C-level performance, you have to feel pretty good about this group.
While some of the decisions during a game can be frustrating at times — and we will definitely get to that in a minute — Ohio State is not chasing style points. The Buckeyes do not need to win every game by 40 points to impress the committee.
All they have to do is win, and at 6-0 that is what they have done so far.
Ryan Day has received his fair share of criticism throughout his head coaching stint in Columbus, but one of the things he has done better than anyone else in the country is avoid the upset.
Day is 48-1 against non-Michigan Big Ten teams, with his only loss coming last season in a 32-31 dogfight at Oregon — a game which Ohio State avenged with a 41-21 win against the Ducks in the Rose Bowl. Day is 51-1 against unranked opponents in his career, with the only blemish being the Wolverines last season.
Ohio State has a win in its pocket over then-No. 1 Texas (who just defeated No. 6 Oklahoma as I’m writing this), and now a win over No. 17. As long as the Buckeyes handle business against even just one of Penn State and Michigan, they will be a lock for the College Football Playoff.
The high-flying blowout victories are fun, and it’s fair to say Ohio State’s offense underperformed on Saturday, but at the end of the day the Buckeyes just need to keep winning. If you can beat a ranked opponent on the road by 18 points without your A or even your B game, that bodes well moving forward.
The Illibuck
I wanted to give a shout out to one of the coolest trophies in college football: the Illibuck!
The big wooden turtle will remain in Columbus as it has since 2008, with the Illini having not beaten the Buckeyes since Nov. 10, 2007.
This matchup was actually the first between Ohio State and Illinois since 2017. The Buckeyes lead the all-time series 69-30, having won each of the last seven meetings.
The Bad
Play-calling
Now that we’ve touched on another dominant defense performance and the importance of being able to win a game like this, we can address the elephant in the room:
Ohio State’s offensive game plan against Illinois was puzzling.
The Illini came into this matchup with the 113th ranked passing defense in the country, and the Buckeyes ran the ball 37 times compared to 27 pass attempts for Julian Sayin. Sayin, meanwhile, came into Saturday as the best quarterback in the country at throwing the ball deep, and yet Ohio State did very little to try and attack Illinois downfield.
It’s a fine idea to try and break tendency and establish the run when it’s working. The problem was that it wasn’t working even a little bit, on top of the fact that Ohio State was telegraphing that it was going to run the ball every time in came out in 13 personnel with a tight end lined up in the backfield.
The make matters worse, the Buckeyes are still trying to get three different guys going in the backfield. Bo Jackson has earned the job as the starter and clearly looks like the best option to carry the ball, but CJ Donaldson and James Peoples are being thrown into the mix seemingly at random.
It feels like a complete flip of a coin which back is going to get the ball on any given down. Ohio State is hell bent on using Donaldson as a “power” back despite Jackson being the best on the team at falling forward and picking up extra yards, and Peoples got a number of carries in big spots having not yet shown this season he’s capable of making plays.
All told, Jackson led the team with 47 yards on 10 carries (4.7 YPC), with Donaldson finishing with 44 yards on 13 carries (3.4 YPC) and two short-yardage TDs and Peoples totaling seven yards on five carries (1.4 YPC).
Time and time again Ohio State elected to go with the ground game instead of getting the ball to its elite wide receivers against a bad passing defense, no matter how little it worked. This was especially detrimental in the red zone, where the Buckeyes were held to short field goals twice as a result of an ineffective ground attack.
A week after Sayin passed for huge numbers against a solid Minnesota defense, it was weird to see Ohio State revert to an offensive game plan similar to that of the Michigan loss last season, albeit to a lesser extent.
Letting Up
It’s hard to really blame a team for taking its foot off the gas after taking a 34-10 lead to start the fourth quarter, but it was strange to see for an Ohio State program that rarely loses focus late in games like that. It was clearly something that Day took note of, as he voiced his displeasure for the Buckeyes letting up in his on-field postgame interview.
After Ohio State scored its final touchdown with 13:25 left to play, a beautiful route by Jeremiah Smith on a corner fade from the 2-yard line, the offense decided it was done for the day. The defense played for one more drive as well before calling it a wrap.
Following the Silver Bullets’ stop, the Buckeyes picked up all of six yards on a three-yard run by Peoples and a three-yard reception by Brandon Inniss before they were forced to punt. The Illini, gifted a short field on a bad kick — more on that in a minute — were more than happy to continue playing.
Altmeyer immediately connected on a 17-yard pass to Beatty to get the drive started, and after a few short runs and passes Illinois was down near the red zone. Mathews was called for pass interference in the end zone to set up the Illini at the 4-yard line, and from there Altmeyer hit Collin Dixon over the middle for a touchdown to cut the deficit to 34-16.
I thought for sure Ohio State would at least try to score after Illinois went for two and attempted an onside kick, but instead the Buckeyes ran the ball up the middle three-straight times for a combined four yards. Illinois started to drive down the field again on its ensuing possession before Arvell Reese decided to effectively end the game himself with a sack that would eventually set up a turnover on downs.
I’m not going to get on the defense for playing back a bit with the game out of reach, but in a game where the offense wasn’t playing well and could use a few more reps, it was odd to see them instead choose to run some clock and punt.
The Ugly
Special Teams
I haven’t gone back to check, but it feels like this is about the fifth time in six games that I’ve had to list the special teams in the ‘Ugly’ portion of this column.
There were issues with the unit across the board as usual: three different procedural penalties, a punt return that went for -2 yards, and other small but annoying blunders.
However, by FAR the biggest special teams issue in this game was the punting — and BOY was it bad.
Joe McGuire punted the ball four times against Illinois, and none of the four went more than 40 yards.
His first three punts of the game went for 39 yards, 34 yards and 37 yards, respectively. McGuire’s last punt of the day, which was booted from the Illinois 44-yard line, went into the end zone for a touchback and a net of 20 yards.
That is an average net punt of 32.5 yards, for those of you keeping score at home.
Quite simply that is nowhere near good enough. Obviously if you are Ohio State you don’t want to be punting very often, but on the occasions that you have to do it you cannot be punting the ball for 30 yards and giving your opponents excellent field position.
The Buckeyes have another punter sitting on the bench in Nick McLarty, who allegedly has a booming leg but isn’t very consistent or accurate. Ohio State’s starting punter right now has no leg and isn’t accurate either, so what is the danger in giving someone else a shot?
As a whole this special teams unit is not up to par, and against one of the better teams on Ohio State’s schedule could prove costly if something doesn’t change soon.
