Ohio State Football still playing too many players on defense

The Ohio State football team was supposed to have made “systematic changes” to the defense in Saturday’s game against Tulsa. There were no such changes. They kept getting gashed like they have every week thus far. In fact, this was worse because of how bad Tulsa is.

Instead of actually playing their best 11 on defense, the Buckeyes decided to keep rotating a cast of characters out there. 28 players (28!!!) played at least one defensive snap on Saturday afternoon. That’s a ridiculous amount of players to play in a game that was as close as that one.

The final score made the game look more like a blowout than it actually was. This was a one-score game with 5 minutes left. At no time should that many players have gotten on the field on defense. Something has to be done about this.

Despite Matt Barnes calling the defensive plays, nothing really changed. They still played too many guys and played primarily one high safety. I understand that Barnes was put in a tough spot after learning he’d call plays in the middle of the week, but this team has to be better.

Normally, I’d say they can fix this with the game against Akron coming up. The problem is, I thought that about this Tulsa game too and we saw how that turned out. I’m truly afraid to see what happens when the Ohio State football team plays the next decent team, not even good just decent, on their schedule.

That next game would be against Rutgers in two weeks. If there is no improvement on the defensive side of the ball, the Buckeyes very well could be on upset alert in that game. I can’t believe I’m even typing those words right now. That’s how concerned I am about this team.

The defense must be fixed. Ryan Day has to take some accountability and insert himself into the defensive gameplan. Something must be done immediately.