Ohio State Football: Three keys to victory in the Rose Bowl
By Ryan Stano
The Ohio State football team has one more game left in the 2021 season. They will face a Utah team that not many Buckeye fans have seen. The ones that have seen the Utes play know that this game will be anything but easy for the Buckeyes. Utah is flat-out tough.
The Rose Bowl is a bowl game that the Buckeyes haven’t played in very often. In fact, they’ve only played in it twice in the last 15 years. Jim Tressel took down Oregon in 2010 and Urban Meyer beat Washington in his final game in 2018. That’s rare for a bowl game that usually takes the Big Ten and Pac-12 champions.
In this game, Ohio State will get more of a fight than those two games. While Washington did come back to make it close in the fourth quarter, most of that game was in hand. I wouldn’t expect that to be the case on Saturday because this Utah team is better than that Washington team.
There are three keys to victory for the Buckeyes that I am keeping my eyes on. With the Buckeyes losing four of their best players to opt-outs, it’s going to be harder than ever for them to win this game. Some younger players who haven’t seen as much playing time will need to step up.
Motivation shouldn’t be too much of a problem. Early on, that was something I was worried about. But these players want to erase the taste of losing to TTUN out of their mouths. They want to end this season on a win and get some momentum heading into next season.
The first key for Ohio State to win comes from some of those young players.