Ohio State football: Bennett Christian weighs in on Buckeyes’ trip to Happy Valley
By Charles Post
Ohio State, fresh off a 52-17 season-opening victory over Nebraska, will travel to Happy Valley for a matchup with 18th ranked Penn State.
The Buckeyes, who have gone 11-4 in their last 15 games against the Nittany Lions, are 12.0-point favorites heading into the Halloween night game.
Justin Fields impressed in his first outing of the year, finishing with 330 total yards, four touchdowns, and a 95.2% completion rate. If he can replicate that performance, it will be an improvement from what he did versus Penn State in 2019. He had 188 passing yards and 68 rushing yards in a 28-17 win a year ago.
“I think Fields is a field general and the prototypical dual-threat. When he sees a chance to run the ball, he has to do it. That’s his play style. He’s probably the best quarterback in all of college football,” Ohio State commit Bennett Christian told me. “I think he does whatever it takes to win the games.”
Penn State will look to take advantage of an Ohio State defense that let Adrian Martinez and Luke McCaffrey account for 165 rushing yards and 7.5 yards per carry. Sean Clifford doesn’t exactly have pull-away speed but he can do some damage on the ground. He had 119 rushing yards on 17 carries in a 36-35 loss at Indiana last Saturday.
“After this week we’ll be able to fix that. Nebraska has some really good guys. Luke McCaffrey can run the ball really well and Martinez has the ability too. I don’t think Sean Clifford can run the ball as well as they can,” Christian said. “With that week of preparation, kind of fixing up the mistakes, I think it will be a lot better.”
The Buckeyes should be able to move the ball consistently against a defense that no longer has Cameron Brown, Yetur Gross-Matos, and Micah Parsons. Ryan Day may look to establish the running game early on against Penn State after Trey Sermon and Master Teague combined for 96 yards and 4.2 yards per carry last week.
“They’re going to get there and run the ball and just physically dominate them on both sides of the ball. I know the guys are really excited for a big game like this,” Christian explained. “They’ve been waiting so long for it so I think we’re going to see a lot of pent-up aggression let out this game.”
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We will see how Ohio State does tomorrow night in what should be their toughest game of the regular season.