Ohio State Football: All-Time Buckeye team’s season ends too soon

After a heart wrenching interception from Justin Fields, an all-time great Ohio State football team’s season is ended way too soon.

This one is going to take a while to swallow. Since winning the national championship back in 2014, every Ohio State football team that followed always seemed to have major flaws, and they always lost crucial games, but it wasn’t all that surprising. That wasn’t the case this year.

This Buckeye team realistically had no flaws. They had an elite quarterback, an elite running back, elite wide receivers, an elite offensive line and two future top five NFL draft picks on defense.

Throughout the season, it felt like this team could do no wrong, and they didn’t for the most part. Until the toughest game of the season by a long shot came calling.

The Buckeyes had Clemson on the ropes early, they looked like the all-time team that everyone was calling them, except when they got in the redzone. In what I am sure was a combination of a stout Clemson offense, and just poor execution from Ohio State, the Buckeyes just weren’t able to get it done on the Tiger’s doorstep.

It resulted in settling for a field goal threes times, and making it a 16-0 start, when it realistically could have been a 28-0 start.

Two drops by J.K. Dobbins, one clearly worse than the other, stopped what looked to be like sure touchdowns. In a game like this, against a Clemson team that just won a national title last season, you can’t make those mistakes.

When a chance to bury a team like that presents itself early you have to execute, and the Buckeyes just didn’t. In return, The Tigers did what all great teams do, made them pay.

It ended up being 16-14 going into halftime, with all of the momentum on Clemson’s side, and one of the best defenders for Ohio State Shaun Wade ejected.

While Wade’s ejection was questionable, that wasn’t the end all be all. In fact, The Buckeye defense played pretty well in the second half despite the loss. They just weren’t able to keep the Tigers off the board when it mattered most.

Yes, the botched fumble return for a touchdown played a factor as well, but I am never the person that is going to say an official’s call decided the game. Ohio State had plenty of opportunities to win that game both before and after that call was made.

Simply put, the Buckeyes just weren’t able to make due on enough of those opportunities to leave with victory.

But the biggest reason why I think Ohio State ultimately fell to their demise on Saturday night though, is something that won’t be talked about much surrounding the chaos that was this game. J.K. Dobbins’s injury that he suffered just before the half was huge.

He obviously wasn’t himself out there after the injury, visibly limping and just not able to make his usual cuts. The run game was the most important part of this Buckeye offense all season, and it took a hit when Dobbins got hurt for certain.

In the end though, the Buckeyes lost a game between two titanic programs, that in many other years would be thought of as the best team in college football without question. That is what hurts the most about this game, we all knew that this Ohio State team was good enough to win a national title but just fell short.

So, as I said at the beginning of the article, this one will take a long time to swallow, but when I am done processing the incredible game that I just witnessed, I will look back at this Buckeye team and understand just how special it was.

It hurts that we have to see some of these guys tear it up in the NFL, now without getting a national title we knew they could have won. But this is without a doubt an Ohio State team for the ages, and while the end result won’t show it, the best team in Ohio State football history.