Instant Analysis From Ohio State's 35-16 Win At Rutgers
Brendan Gulick and Anthony Moeglin react to Ohio States win at Rutgers.
Category
🥇
SportsTranscript
00:00 [SOUND]
00:08 Stop me if I sound like a broken record.
00:10 Ohio State with a nearly 20 point win on the road in the Big Ten,
00:14 in a game that for spurts didn't look great, but ultimately, you win by 19 points.
00:19 Doesn't that sound like what's happened several times throughout the course of
00:22 the year?
00:22 Welcome to our instant analysis show on Buckeye Breakdown,
00:26 part of the Buckeyes Now family on the Sports Illustrated Media Group with
00:30 Fan Nation.
00:31 Hey, look, it was not a perfect game by any stretch.
00:35 And yet there were some parts of this game, Anthony, that I thought were terrific.
00:39 Trevion Henderson at full strength for the second week in a row shows he is as
00:43 dynamic a playmaker as anybody in the country, frankly.
00:47 >> And one of the more important guys on this team, right?
00:50 You know, like when today, and it felt like Kyle was just a touch off.
00:54 And when Kyle's off, it makes it really hard for Marvin and
00:57 Emeka to make big plays.
00:58 And then the nice part about Trevion is that when he's on, you can just turn,
01:02 hand that thing to him, and he's going crazy.
01:04 He's playing really, really, really good football and
01:07 kind of carrying this Ohio State team these past couple weeks.
01:11 >> I thought his 65 yard catch and run is the kind of play that even though he
01:17 doesn't score a touchdown, I can absolutely see one of the national
01:22 draft coverage shows someday putting that on a highlight reel to showcase
01:27 his explosiveness, his open field speed, his ability to make guys miss.
01:32 That was a major highlight play.
01:34 I know it didn't ultimately end up in a touchdown, but
01:37 you wanna talk about the kind of momentum swinging play where Rutgers thought like
01:42 maybe they had Ohio State on their heels just a little bit.
01:46 And Henderson flipped the field and
01:47 ultimately helped Ohio State score there on that drive in the second half.
01:51 >> Yeah, Ross Tucker, the color analyst for the game,
01:55 had a really good quote on that.
01:57 He called him an angle breaker, not an ankle breaker, an angle breaker.
02:01 Where the point is that when defenses are chasing the guy,
02:06 you pick a spot on the sideline and you run to that to try to meet him at that spot.
02:09 Well, the way you break those angles is having elite speed and explosiveness.
02:13 And you could see him just take off and break the angles of those defenders.
02:20 And it just was elite, it was elite speed.
02:21 And that's one of those things, it's such a backbreaker for defense, right?
02:27 When you're going into a game like this, you're thinking, hey,
02:29 I gotta stop Marvin, I gotta stop Emeka, I've gotta stop the tight end room.
02:33 And then after that, when you force him into a check down, they're checking it
02:37 down to one of the best running backs in all of college football.
02:41 And he can get a 65 yard gain out of a ball that traveled two yards in the air.
02:46 So it's just like a backbreaker when you're on the defense and
02:50 something like that happens.
02:52 >> We'll talk Kyle McCord a bit more specifically in a separate video.
02:55 But I think it's at least worth acknowledging some of his play in our
02:59 general analysis here of the game.
03:01 Completed his last seven passes in a row to end last week against Wisconsin and
03:07 started the game this week 11 of 11.
03:09 So he breaks CJ Stroud's record from a couple years ago
03:13 with 18 consecutive completed passes.
03:16 In the first half only through a couple of incompletions in total,
03:20 two of which were dropped and one of which was a nice breakup.
03:23 And obviously through an interception.
03:25 And yet I feel like, especially if you're on Twitter at halftime, and
03:29 even post game man, you better have some thick skin because Kyle's taken a lot
03:34 of flack and I know we only threw for 189.
03:37 And I know it was not a great game.
03:40 It wasn't an elite game from Ohio State in the quarterback room, but
03:43 he was plenty fine in my opinion.
03:46 >> And that's all he needed to be and you even think back to like he's hurt.
03:51 So to go out to grind through his injury,
03:54 to do enough to get the team in position to win.
03:57 Those are some of the big things and let's not, I think we're like our fan base in
04:02 specific is kind of stuck on the Rutgers are meaning what it's meant in the past.
04:06 Like that's a fine, that's a good football team.
04:08 >> That's a good team.
04:10 >> Yeah, and they're scrappy on defense and they control the tempo and
04:13 they made it a short game and
04:14 they were executing their game plan very, very well in the first half.
04:18 And it makes it really challenging and what I really liked from Kyle,
04:22 there's some things you don't like, you can't turn the ball over.
04:25 But what I really liked was in the first half,
04:28 he wasn't forcing it down the field.
04:31 You can find yourself forcing the ball to Marvin, forcing it to a Mac and
04:35 be like, I have to push it, I have to push it.
04:38 But he didn't do that.
04:39 He was being very, very conservative with the football, checking it down,
04:43 keeping it safe and just keeping the thing moving.
04:46 Certainly areas to improve, he wasn't perfect by any means, but
04:49 I thought he played fine.
04:51 Yeah, he didn't win the Heisman today, but I thought he did enough.
04:54 And at the end of the game, Ryan Day said in the presser,
04:56 the goal is to win the football game and
04:57 he played well enough this afternoon to get the win.
04:59 >> I mean, let's give him credit for going out there in the second half and
05:04 leading touchdown drives on three of Ohio State's four drives in the second half,
05:08 which is an entirely different thing to wrap your head around.
05:12 Let's not go any further without acknowledging the defense again today,
05:15 playing really well in two respects in particular.
05:19 One, forcing Rutgers to kick three field goals from 20, 21, and 22 yards.
05:26 That is deep in the low red and not giving up a touchdown.
05:30 Did not allow a completed pass until there were just under three minutes left
05:35 in the first half.
05:36 They made Rutgers struggle to be more than one dimensional,
05:41 I guess multi-dimensional is a better way to say it.
05:43 Rutgers was effective running the ball, but you can't run the ball every single
05:48 play and when they tried to move it through the air,
05:51 regularly were unable to do so well.
05:54 So give the defense credit for that.
05:56 And then obviously the huge play, right?
05:58 I mean, Josh Proctor's coming in like he's gonna deliver a hit and
06:01 he realizes that's probably on the verge of targeting.
06:03 So he starts to spin away from where he could be called for targeting.
06:08 Still got hurt, unfortunately, and I hope he's gonna be okay long term.
06:12 Was glad to see him up and walking around on the sideline,
06:15 trying to rev his teammates up.
06:17 Clearly, for whatever injury he suffered, it was not totally debilitating.
06:22 But for Jordan Hancock to be in the right place to react that way, and
06:26 then house it 93 yards, again, you wanna talk about a backbreaking blow for
06:31 Rutgers.
06:33 Ohio State's defense found a way to score when they really needed it.
06:36 >> And you were there too, and what they were saying on the broadcast,
06:39 you could feel the energy in the stadium just totally come out.
06:42 Because think about the situation it was.
06:46 It was nine to seven, and Rutgers was driving and kind of controlling it, right?
06:50 The last couple of drives, they had been able to put it together and
06:53 get down deep into the red area.
06:55 And then to come up with that play, and not only just pick it off, but
06:59 then take it to the house.
07:00 You're like, man, for the way Rutgers was playing,
07:03 there's no way they can kind of rebound from that and come back from it.
07:07 To their credit, they stuck in and still battled, but just a great play.
07:10 And you make that point about forcing Rutgers into all those field goals.
07:16 That's so huge, it truly is.
07:19 And at the time, you kind of are disappointed,
07:21 like we let them get down the field.
07:22 But once they get in the scoring range, the goal changes in your mind.
07:25 It's, hey, we're keeping them out of the end zone and
07:27 force them to make field goals.
07:29 And those are four point plays, however you wanna cut it.
07:33 Because if they do go into halftime off of a touchdown, now you're in deep trouble.
07:38 And now you're kind of starting to really press and have to force it.
07:41 But this defense, again, proves that they're one of the best groups in
07:44 the country.
07:45 And they showed it for really for four quarters this afternoon.
07:48 >> I was particularly impressed with Rutgers' cornerback play.
07:54 Muhammad Toure, who had the interception, but
07:56 also had a terrific physical game defensively.
08:01 And number 10, Philip Dixon, or Flip Dixon, excuse me.
08:04 I just, I love the way those guys played and hit with authority.
08:10 And I think that's what has been missing from Rutgers in years past.
08:15 They've started to turn the corner the last couple years.
08:18 But there was a reason why this game had an 18 and a half point spread, by the way.
08:25 How good was that spread again?
08:26 >> [LAUGH] >> It's a couple weeks in a row,
08:29 by the way, that that's been the case.
08:31 >> Yes.
08:32 >> I just, I think Rutgers is way better than people give them credit for.
08:37 Everybody in this fan base tends to expect Ohio State to just boat race teams.
08:44 And they've got a lot of talent, right?
08:47 They're gonna win pretty much every game they play.
08:50 But this year has been fun, in my opinion, because it's been a little dramatic.
08:56 It hasn't been cakewalk week after week after week.
08:59 And the fact that the rest of the conference has gotten a little bit better,
09:03 regardless of what you're seeing some of the people nationally say.
09:07 I think the quality of the play in the Big Ten is pretty good this year.
09:10 And Ohio State's got two more home games coming up before they've got to go on
09:14 the road to Ann Arbor and try to make one count.
09:17 >> Yeah, no, it is a good tip of the cap to the Rutgers defense.
09:21 And one of the things that I was focused on, not that we had talked about it, but
09:25 I just was kind of more curious was their past defense to this point has been
09:30 incredibly elite Rutgers, who I'm speaking of.
09:33 And I was more interested to see,
09:34 was it more of a factor of their opponent or are they actually very good?
09:38 I think they proved today that they're actually very good.
09:40 And I think they're very well coached.
09:41 Outside of that Travion play that we had already talked about, that 65 yarder,
09:47 that was just bad tackling in my opinion.
09:50 But like, Carnell Tate, two catches, 31 yards.
09:53 Emeka, four for 29.
09:55 Marvin, four for 25.
09:56 G Scott, three for 24.
09:58 Like those guys, holding those guys to those numbers,
10:01 it's not only one guy playing very well, I think they did.
10:04 But they played really good team defense.
10:06 You can see a bunch like, hey, Marvin was covered a lot down the field.
10:09 Emeka covered a lot down the field.
10:10 Carnell, a lot of these times they were getting into these,
10:14 deep into the zones and just being covered up.
10:17 I'm very impressed, very impressed by them for sure.
10:20 And like you said, I think the rising tide lifts all boats.
10:25 I think that the Big 10 is all the teams are starting
10:29 to kind of come up a little bit.
10:30 And it's made for some fun weeks for us at least.
10:33 It's not a 60 nothing blowout every week.
10:35 Gives you a game to watch and things to continue to get better at.
10:41 We'll wrap with this.
10:42 RK, who's in a lot of our videos, we certainly appreciate his support.
10:46 He dropped in the not so special team's strike again.
10:49 And so I think it's worth bringing up that Ryan Day was asked
10:52 a couple of different times in the postgame press
10:55 conference about the fake punt in the first half.
10:58 And he said, hey, it wasn't supposed to be a fake punt.
11:02 Communication breakdown, no excuses, shouldn't have happened.
11:06 And when he was asked if he would elaborate on it, he said, maybe Tuesday.
11:10 But no thank you.
11:14 It was bad.
11:15 You can't have that mistake.
11:16 And Ohio State has had some bad special teams moments this year.
11:20 Ultimately, it hasn't been them in the win-loss column.
11:23 But it's hard to imagine that that trend will continue.
11:26 They've got to get sharper there.
11:29 So full transparency, I'm watching the game.
11:31 I'm like, all right, Ohio State's going to punt.
11:33 I walked into the other room to fill up my cup or something.
11:36 I come back and I'm like, what the heck?
11:37 And I rewound it.
11:39 And my first thought was, this is very un-Ryan Day-like.
11:45 This isn't the right way to say it, but to sink to the level of the other coach.
11:48 And that's not the right way to say it.
11:49 But you think of, we talked about it earlier, Greg Shiano's going to kind of
11:53 pull all the tricks out of his sleeve and try to do different things and
11:56 win the special teams battle.
11:59 And I'm like, that doesn't look like a Ryan Day decision.
12:03 And it looks kind of like, why are we doing this?
12:06 So it's good to know that it wasn't supposed to be called.
12:09 How that happens, they don't know.
12:10 But yeah, it was good to know that he wasn't like, hey,
12:13 we're going to run a fake in our own end zone, or our own side of the field,
12:18 and try to make something happen.
12:20 Yeah, it didn't feel right.
12:21 I'm glad that it was not supposed to be a fake.
12:24 But whatever that chemistry is, whatever that communication system is,
12:32 got to get better there for sure.
12:35 Ultimately, Ohio State wins, 35-16, down 9-7 at halftime.
12:40 And they came out and outscored Rutgers in the second half
12:42 with four touchdowns, two in the third quarter, two in the fourth quarter.
12:45 Obviously, had a defensive score mixed in there and got the job done.
12:49 0 for 5 on third downs the Buckeyes were in the first half,
12:52 then they were 6 for 7 on third downs in the second half.
12:55 There were certainly fewer explosive moments offensively
12:59 than we're used to seeing, but ultimately enough
13:01 that Ohio State certainly, I think, backed up the fact
13:06 that they are worthy of one of the top four spots in the country
13:09 right now among those teams looking for a CFP bid.
13:15 Yeah, and one thing I will add too, the first massively explosive play
13:20 that Ohio State gave up on that fourth down that you had called,
13:24 where they did the old fumble rooski through the legs,
13:27 is the biggest play that--
13:28 I called it.
13:31 The biggest play Ohio State had given up all year,
13:33 and it was just a freaky little play there.
13:36 So hey, if you're having to dig into the trick plays to get explosives on you,
13:40 you're doing the right thing.
13:42 I mean, that's so Greg Ciano.
13:43 Like literally, that is--
13:45 it was almost obvious to me, but I'm sitting around
13:48 with several other people in the press box, and they're lining up.
13:50 They're like, oh, they're going to try to sneak it.
13:52 I'm like, no, they're not.
13:53 Why would you do that?
13:54 Why would you try to run into a massive wall?
13:56 Like something goofy is going to happen here.
13:59 And it was perfect execution.
14:01 It was a fun play design.
14:03 Good for Rutgers, man.
14:05 You've got to figure out ways to keep a really good defense off balance.
14:09 And the play wasn't just successful, it was huge.
14:12 But again, to Ohio State's credit, they held them out of the end zone.
14:15 So ultimately, good enough for the defense.
14:19 Yeah, no question.
14:20 And the replay was hilarious.
14:21 Like they slowed it down, and he's just going underneath,
14:24 and then Fededra was like--
14:26 it was classic.
14:27 You have to run that slow enough.
14:29 You have to get the defense to suck in.
14:32 It was perfect execution.
14:35 And then even on that play, we talked about it earlier.
14:39 But holding them to three points was huge
14:40 because he almost went to the house.
14:42 And I think it was Davidson.
14:46 Yeah, he chased him down, fought off the block,
14:49 and went and chased him down, and didn't let him in the end zone.
14:52 And it saved four points.
14:55 Terrific work from Ohio State defensively
14:57 when they had their backs against the wall.
14:58 That's for sure.
14:59 Final score today, 35-16.
15:02 Ohio State adds a late touchdown, wins by 19,
15:05 and covers at the end of the game.
15:07 Good teams win, great teams cover.
15:10 The Buckeyes got it done on the road.
15:12 9-0, coming home.
15:13 They're going to play the Michigan State Spartans coming up
15:16 on Saturday night.
15:17 For Anthony Meglan and Brendan Gulick,
15:18 that's our instant analysis.
15:20 For plenty more coverage of the Ohio State Buckeyes,
15:22 head over to BuckeyesNow.com.
15:24 And please subscribe to this YouTube channel.
15:28 [CLICK]
15:29 [BLANK_AUDIO]