Ohio State Football: Three takeaways from Rutgers win

The Ohio State football team turned in their best performance of the season in their 52-13 bludgeoning of Rutgers. The Buckeyes were only about a two-touchdown favorite against a Rutgers team that only lost to That Team Up North (TTUN) by only seven points just one week ago.

The Scarlet Knights have evolved into a solid team under Greg Schiano, the game was expected to be competitive. Ohio State put that notion to rest almost immediately by taking a 14-0 lead in the first four minutes of the contest. From start to finish, the Bucks were dominant.

Clearly, there were a lot of positive takeaways in OSU’s impressive win. It truly was a complete showing on both sides of the ball. Here are three takeaways from Ohio State’s Week 5 victory over Rutgers.

1. C.J. Stroud shredded Rutgers, proving he is the starter

The Buckeyes’ starting quarterback C.J. Stroud has received much criticism in his first three weeks of play. The passing attack got off to slow starts week by week, which clearly held back this offense. With so many dangerous weapons to throw to, fans were understandably upset with where the offense was.

Coming off his worst performance of the season versus Tulsa, Stroud looked fantastic against Rutgers with 330 passing yards and five touchdowns. Ryan Day’s plan to rest Stroud’s shoulder for a week worked perfectly. As usual, some of Stroud’s passing yards were a product of run after catch by OSU’s talented receivers.

While his stats looked somewhat similar to past games, Stroud’s performance was noticeably better. He only had maybe two inaccurate passes that were a little high, outside of that Stroud played a near-perfect game.

Here’s one of Stroud’s many elite throws against Rutgers.

Perhaps what was most encouraging about Stroud’s play was how accurate he was downfield. He was outstanding on throws of 10+ yards with a perfect passer rating of 158.3. Yes, you read that right, Stroud had a perfect passer rating on throws of 10+ yards!

Stroud put on a clinic when he was in, keep in mind he posted these stats in a little over a half of play. We saw what a healthy Stroud can do, he showed some Heisman upside.

There’s still a long way to go for Stroud, but no one is going to claim he should be sitting after Saturday’s performance.