Ohio State football: Is OSU living on borrowed time?

The Ohio State football team was a heavy favorite the last two weeks against Penn State and Nebraska. Both weeks they’ve come away with nine-point wins. Both weeks they squandered opportunities to put teams away and allowed them to stay in the game. Both weeks they made the game needlessly close. The question is this: are the Buckeyes living on borrowed time?

It hasn’t been just one thing that has allowed the last two opponents to stay in the game. We are all too aware of Ohio State’s struggles against Penn State inside the red zone. Six trips, one touchdown. Multiple failures in short yardage.

Give the Nittany Lion defense the credit they deserve, but Ryan Day made it easy for them by continually trying to run the ball into the A gaps where over half of the defense seemed to be waiting. On the defensive side that night the Buckeyes found it nearly impossible to get off the field on third down. Penn State converted 11 of 18 overall and were 11 of 14 in situations of 8 yards or less (read my article about that here).

If you look at the stats from the Nebraska game, you come away completely baffled as to why the game was close. The Buckeye offense gained in the neighborhood of 180 yards more than the Husker defense had been allowing each game.

The Buckeye defense held their offense to over a hundred yards below their average and kept them to just 2 of 13 on third down. They sacked Husker quarterback Adrian Martinez five times and harassed him into completing barely half of his passes.

But, the game was still very much hanging in the balance as the ball bounced across the Memorial Stadium turf with less than two minutes to play. Fortunately, Luke Wypler corralled it before anyone in a red jersey could scoop it up and trot into the end zone.

Why did Saturday’s game stay close? One reason is turnovers. C.J. Stroud completed a lot of passes, but he also tried to force the ball at times. On two of the times he did so, the Huskers came up with an interception. Another reason is penalties.

Yes, I know what you’re thinking here, but I don’t want to get into that now. They were called for delay of game and intentional grounding on first down, and multiple holding penalties (trust me, I know what you’re thinking). Too many times the offense ended up behind the chains because of these.

Lastly, it is hard to fault the defense for anything because I thought they may have played their best game of the season, but two big pass plays totaling 125 yards led to fourteen Nebraska points and allowed them to stay in the game. I know a lot of people have been critical of Ryan Day’s play calling. While I have some issues with it, there is still no way this game should have been as close as it was.

When you allow teams to hang around and stay in games, it will eventually come back to bite you. That hasn’t happened yet, but the Ohio State football team can’t continue to allow this to happen. If they do, they’re living on borrowed time.