Ohio State Football: Buckeyes dominated by Boilermakers

The Ohio State football team managed to pull out comeback wins recently but that wasn’t going to happen against the Purdue Boilermakers.

The Ohio State football team lost to unranked Purdue 49-20 in West Lafayette. On both sides of the ball the Buckeyes looked uncomfortable all night long.

The theme of the night for the defense was missed tackles. Play after play, Buckeye linebackers took bad angles to ball carriers which resulted in poor tackles . The poor tackling extended drives and led to Purdue breaking off huge rushing touchdowns, including the dagger scores in the fourth quarter by Dj Knox.

The secondary has been struggling to keep tight with opponent receivers. With a Purdue run game that was rolling, they were caught out of position often. That was compounded by the defensive line’s inability to control the line of scrimmage.

Until late, it was a struggle for Dwayne Haskins to get going. He struggled specifically in the red zone, missing out on a touchdown each of their four trips. His two touchdown passes were on plays where he targeted a player deep over top of the defense, or when he was able to get a speedy receiver into space.

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Haskins also struggled with accuracy. His numbers may not reflect this as much as the tape will show because his receivers made plays on mis-timed passes. He overthrew deep receivers and dealt with a number of dropped passes. Haskins finished 49/73 for  470 yards two touchdowns and an interception.

Ohio State couldn’t muster much of a run game either. The Buckeyes’ lack of potency on offense was related to their weak rushing attack.

J.K. Dobbins and Mike Weber combined for a meager 69 yards on 19 attempts. Their production has been slumping for three weeks now.

Without these two backs being threats, Purdue could focus on confusing the Ohio State passing offense with their coverages.

The end result was a 29 point victory for the Boilermakers over the previously No. 2 ranked Buckeyes.