Here are five things to know about No. 4 Ohio State’s win over Nebraska:
1. Deep balls kept Ohio State afloat in the first half.
The Buckeyes (6-1) had 197 yards and averaged 8.6 yards per play in the first half, but they only scored twice — on a 40-yard touchdown pass to Carnell Tate and a 60-yard touchdown pass to Jeremiah Smith — while turning the ball over on downs once and missing a field goal.
Will Howard completed all nine of his passes for 167 yards, but the running game struggled as TreVeyon Henderson and Quinshon Judkins combined for 32 yards on nine carries before halftime.
“We hit the ones we had to,” Howard said of the deep ball success. “I think it was good. I’m not going to give myself a grade on them until I watch the film. I think I held up Carnell a little on his and needed to push the ball down the field a little more and make it a little easier on him, but we got the perfect looks.”
2. The Ohio State offensive line had a rough day.
Zen Michalski started in place of injured left tackle Josh Simmons, and he gave up a sack on the second offensive snap for the Buckeyes.
That was not the only time he appeared to give up pressure, but Michalski was only the weak link on a group that seemed to struggle across the board.
The running game never got untracked, either, and neither Day nor Howard were sure why after the game.
“Something I’m gonna have to go back and look at the film on,” Howard said. “I don’t think we ran the ball as well as we wanted to today, and a lot of our passes are in the play-action world.”
Henderson finished with 29 yards on 10 carries while Judkins had 25 yards on 10 totes, though Judkins did catch a 9-yard touchdown pass that ended up being the game-winner in the fourth quarter.
To add injury to insult, Michalski left the game in the fourth quarter with an apparent left leg injury. He was down after the pile landed on top of him on a running play then had to be helped off by two members of the Ohio State training staff.
Day had no update on him when the game was over, but Donovan Jackson finished the game at left tackle. Austin Siereveld replaced him at left guard, a lineup that could be the best available for the Buckeyes the rest of the season.
Credit: DaytonDailyNews
3. The defense did some good things.
After two weeks of criticism for struggling at Oregon, the Ohio State defense made more good things happen than bad.
Nebraska, which brought a subpar offense into the contest, finished with 273 total yards and averaged 4.1 yards per play.
Defensive coordinator Jim Knowles brought much more pressure against the Cornhuskers (5-3) than he did at Oregon, a strategy that paid off at times.
“We could always be better,” said linebacker Cody Simon, who had a team-high eight tackles, including three for loss. “There’s still so many areas where we could have made plays, and I mean, we could have helped our offense out more. We need to make more turnovers.
“We need to create more stops and give them less rushing yards and keep the quarterback in the pocket. So there’s just a lot of stuff we can work on.”
One issue for the Buckeyes was pass coverage as cornerback Davison Igbinosun was flagged for pass interference three times.
4. The third quarter was Ohio State’s worst of the season.
The Buckeyes had a chance to take control of the game when they received the kickoff to start the third quarter but did nothing with it, running three plays and punting.
Nebraska then kept the ball for nearly six minutes and drove for a field goal before getting it right back when Howard thew an interception on Ohio State’s first play of the next drive.
A goal-line stand prevented that from hurting on the scoreboard, but when the stanza was over the Buckeyes had been outgained 66-23 and outscored 3-0. The Cornhuskers had six first downs while Ohio State had none.
“I don’t know if there is one thing we can put our finger on, but we’ve got to go back and look at the film and get it corrected because we’re in the playoffs now and every game is the most important game,” Howard said. “We can’t afford to put a performance out there that we’re not proud of like today, and I think today will wake us up and remind us we have to continue to grind every single day, every single week, and not get complacent. You never know. I think Nebraska did some good things. They changed up some looks on us and do some funky stuff up front, so credit to them, but we were able to get it done.”
Credit: DaytonDailyNews
5. The Buckeyes won anyway.
That was Day’s focus when all was said and done.
He did not wave away the issues that have surfaced with his team that has the loftiest of goals for the season, but he did spin the way everything played out Saturday in a positive manner.
“So we’re down by three in the fourth quarter, put a drive together and score a touchdown then the defense gets stops,” Day said. “That to me is what we’ve got to do to win games. Now the truth is we don’t always find ourselves in games like that. Now we’re gonna look back and find that we should not be in games like this quite honestly. That’s just the way we look at it, but give Nebraska credit.
“I kept saying, ‘How are we gonna win the game?’ We talked about that in the off week. We did that, so that we can build on, but certainly if we’re gonna go 1 for 10 on third down and run the football the way we did in this game we’re going to be in a tough spot, but I do like the way we kept playing even after a couple of unfortunate things that went on. We can’t leave it up to a call, and we talked about that.
“I think being in these situations for this team is going to help us moving forward.”
SATURDAY’S GAME
Ohio State at Penn State, Noon, FOX, 1410
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